Zero Art Online
by Racke
Summary: Louise gets bodily reverse-summoned into Sword Art Online, just as Kayaba's Forced Teleportation gathers all 10,000 players for his announcement. The Death Game is on.
1. Chapter 1

Zero Online: Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

Louise took a deep breath and began her chant.

She didn't care if it was a mouse or a dragon or whatever, just that it would be _something_, something to prove that she wasn't a magic-less noble. Something to prove that she wasn't a Zero.

Finishing her words, she swung her wand-...!

The magic circle glowed.

The world was inverted and agony was everything. A horribly buzzing noise was painfully building inside of her head, but even that couldn't compare to the feeling of her bones being turned inside-out and her lungs catching on fire.

A voice-, no, an _intent_ broke through her agony. Demanding her name.

She didn't know. It hurt too much. How was she supposed to remember? She was in pain. Pain pain painpainpain.

_State your name._ The unyielding intent demanded.

_Louise!_ She finally cried back at it.

_That name is unavailable, state a different name._ The voice countered mercilessly.

She was in pain. Painpainpainpain! Her name wasn't allowed. She wasn't allowed to have her name. She needed a name. Her name. What was she?

_Zero!_ She cried out, anything to stop the agony. _I'm just a Zero!_

Then it was over, and Louise collapsed onto the cobblestones.

She was crying, she noted blearily in the aftermath of what was probably her biggest failure to date. She'd never accidentally tortured herself before, this was definitely on a new low.

There was a loud murmur, as if an immense crowd surrounded her, which was relieving only in that even if it was likely that she'd accidentally exploded the entire courtyard there had _possibly_ not been any casualties. She wasn't really feeling up to being declared a murderer right now.

Grimacing, Louise crawled to her knees to see what was happening. What kind of damage her most painful failure yet had caused.

And-...

Where was the school?

Who were all the people in strange clothing?

Where was her wand?

And, perhaps most importantly, why had the sky just turned red and begun to display writing?

Eyes impossibly wide at the sight of some manner of crimson liquid oozing out of the cracks in between the red plates that the sky consisted of, Louise wondered if she'd gone to hell. It wasn't an impossibility, she noted absently, too confused and terrified to feel any spectacular emotion at the idea of 'eternal torment'.

Then the crimson goo transformed into a cloaked humanoid, and a voice boomed down at them. "Attention players. Welcome to my world." There were some scattered murmuring from the crowd. "My name is Kayaba Akihiko. As of now, I am the sole person in control of this world."

Louise blinked, a sudden fire sparking through her eyes. She might have become a noble in name only due to her lack of magic, but she was a devout follower of the Founder Brimir's teachings. And the humanoid in the cloak obviously wasn't Brimir, and as such what he was speaking was heresy!

Then again, her sudden – and admittedly conditioned – rage faltered, they were in hell. Brimir probably didn't care overly much about what happened to people in hell.

The man continued, speaking something about 'logs' and 'games' and 'nerve gear' and some manner of punishment being 'death'.

Louise was feeling rather lost, not able to grasp what he was speaking of, nor the slowly dawning horror on the faces of the rest of the crowd. What was so terrifying about 'death' being a punishment in hell? It obviously made no sense, since they were already dead, but if they died it wasn't as if it'd be possible to end up in place _worse_ than hell, was there?

Then he told them that he'd left them a 'gift', and suddenly people started drawing their fingers in the air, making patches of light appear in thin air. Before mirrors suddenly came into existence in people's hands.

She'd never seen magic like that before.

Blue light washed over the crowd, and there were screams. Louise felt the briefest of twitches of the horrible agony that she'd felt originally, but then it was gone, and they were back in the giant square. Only... the people looked different. There were even – in some extreme cases – some men who were dressed up as women.

Louise was horribly confused.

XXX

A week. Seven days. That was how long it took until Louise began to grasp what her 'hell' really was.

It was a game. An illusion originally created to entertain the masses, that had been hijacked by a genius madman who was now forcing them to fight an army of nearly endless monsters with their very lives hanging in the balance.

They weren't even given magic, only swords. And the people who knew enough about the 'game' from some manner of previous experience had selfishly rushed ahead, leaving the rest behind to fend for themselves.

Louise didn't know how to use a sword, but there was a small book that explained some of it, and she was still a Valliere. She refused to sit around and play a damsel in distress when it was so clear what she needed to do.

Once the game was cleared, the Boss of the 100th Floor defeated, they could all go home. Or, at the very least, those among them still alive would be allowed to go home.

So, Louise got to her feet and began learning how to kill monsters with a sword.

She might not like it, she might hate every moment of it, but she hadn't been raised to simply lay down and allow others to save her. And so she would fight, even if it meant her death.

XXX

Louise glared at the wall, her teeth grinding together in furious frustration.

Her name wasn't 'Louise'. Her name was 'Zero'.

The indignity of it all was nearly enough to make her kill someone.

She hadn't really been thinking clearly when the 'intent', that was most likely the AI of Sword Art Online, had demanded a name from her. And if she ever encountered it again, she would not be held liable for her actions of extreme violence towards its person. But until such a time came, she could blame nobody but herself for stating that most hated of nicknames as her name.

Thankfully, nobody seemed to be taking her name as something pathetic, but rather as a name much like any other. Then again, perhaps that was to be expected when some of the names amongst the players that she'd encountered were downright bizarre.

It was also quite obvious that most players spoke a different language than she did. It wasn't a problem in that there was an auto-translate incorporated into the game itself, meaning that it was barely noticeable, but it helped explain some of the more confounding names that she'd encountered.

She was in a place far, far away from home, and everyone she'd encountered so far were in agreement that there truly was only one moon in the sky back home, and that she was strange for asking about it. They'd also sometimes commented on people having _traveled there_, which was insane, but something that apparently also was considered as 'common knowledge'.

Still, despite the madness of how different their home worlds were supposed to be, Louise couldn't help but come to an absolute conclusion. They all wanted to go home, and they were all trapped against their will.

She was just grateful that the madness of the first few days had mostly blown over, and that people were no longer walking off cliffs in order to 'return home' at random intervals. That had been horrifying to watch.

XXX

Louise took a deep breath as she made her way to the meeting place.

They'd been here for a month, and it seemed like someone had decided that they ought to be ready to defeat the Boss of the 1st Floor by now. Louise wasn't feeling overly optimistic on the subject, though she was starting to run out of things that were _easily_ capable of 'killing her dead' on this Floor.

Honestly, Louise didn't enjoy risking her life at every turn, and didn't feel especially inclined to continue on in order to find enemies that were _more_ capable than the ones that she'd only recently become able to feel reasonably safe whilst fighting.

Then again, the sooner they made it to the 100th Floor, the sooner they could go home. And Louise really wanted to go back home.

She might be bullied, she might be mocked, she might be nothing but a useless Zero, but she missed it. She missed the familiarity of having two moons rising during the night, of wearing the clothes of a noble, of having a room of her own, of writing letters home to Cattleya... hell, she even missed the mocking words of her classmates, because at least they weren't going to kill her, unlike the monsters roaming the world of Aincrad.

XXX

Louise tilted her head thoughtfully as she considered what she knew of the Beta-testers.

They'd known about a lot of stuff in SAO, and instead of helping those who didn't know, they'd used that knowledge to secure their own skins.

It was... dishonorable, but it was also human. Louise wasn't sure that she wouldn't have done the exact same thing had she been in their place. Who could she trust? Who could she be certain wouldn't betray her? How many could she even help if she'd tried?

The answer was that had she been in the Beta-testers position, she would've probably acted just like them. She didn't want to die, after all.

So, whilst the brute shouted for vengeance against them, instead of joining him, Louise merely shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Nobody would be stupid enough to come straight out and tell a potential mob-in-the-making that they were one of those that they were searching for, and yet Louise was pretty sure that the spiky-haired brute wouldn't allow discussions to continue until they did reveal themselves.

"What would you have done?" Louise finally asked the man, briefly surprised at her own daring. "Had you been in their position, would you have waited for others to maybe get their acts together? Taught everyone on a ten-to-one ratio?" She felt a sneer of contempt building on her face that – whilst impressive – was most likely nothing but a shadow to that of her mother. "Do you really think you have any ground on which to condemn them?"

The man blinked, stunned at being interrupted by the small girl, and clearly uncomfortable at the expression on her face.

"Now now, let's all calm down." The man who'd called the meeting begged, hands in a placating gesture. "Psychologically, it's perhaps understandable, but that doesn't mean that resentment won't appear."

"Shut up!" The spiky-haired brute snapped at the man. "And you! I bet you're one of them betas!" He yelled at her.

Louise blinked. "I didn't have any knowledge of this game before my arrival – which was just around the time that Kayaba held his speech. I spent a week wandering around the starting city and trying to figure out if I'd somehow died and gone to hell." She confessed, frowning, both at the man, and at the memory of her own ineptitude to dealing with the change.

The crowd murmured, quite a few shifting guiltily at the confession of a small girl wandering the city in such a way. But that didn't matter to Louise, what mattered was the fact that the idiot brute was still pointing a finger at her.

"Then why are you on their side, huh?!" He yelled at her.

"Because they wrote the book that kept me alive for the other three weeks." She held up the small book that she'd gotten for free, and that a large dark-skinned man with an ax had later explained to her as having been composed by the beta-testers.

And that was it. The spiky-haired brute had lost the crowd utterly, and so he had no choice but to grudgingly concede victory.

Louise allowed herself to feel a little bit smug at that. She didn't normally win in fights like these, usually being either up against classmates more talented in magic than her, or her own genius sisters, so to her winning was still a rare and pleasant change from the norm.

Of course, her satisfaction was somewhat dampened when the blue-haired man again spoke up in the silence that followed, this time beginning the strategy meeting in earnest.

A monster that needed more than 40 people fighting it in order to bring it down? That... that would be... bad. Really really bad.

Steeling herself from the flash of fear as she remembered all of her close-calls with regular monsters when she'd started out, Louise began to glance around for a party to join.

She wasn't going to join the spiky-haired brute if she could help it, because the Rule of Steel did not allow its practitioners to blame others, and though Louise was useless at magic and not a good person and a 'Zero', she was still the daughter of Karin of the Heavy Wind, and the Rule of Steel had been drilled into her spine from an early age.

Thus, she searched the crowd for someone that would _definitely_ not be on that man's party. Which proved rather complicated since everyone were bunching up into a cluster that made distinguishing between the forming parties significantly more difficult than it ought to be.

Feeling a headache forming, Louise finally spotted two people that were remaining removed from the crowd, a vaguely nervous-looking boy and a girl wearing a hooded cloak.

Chancing a brief glance backwards to the others, Louise decided to take her chances with the two 'outcasts'.

XXX

"Umm... not to be rude or anything, but why _did_ you defend the betas?" The boy finally asked her, looking guiltily nervous about something.

Louise blinked, looking up from the delicious wonder that was actually _tasty food_. "Their actions might've been dishonorable, but it wasn't their fault that we were trapped here, and we can hardly blame them for looking out for themselves in a life-or-death struggle that might be on a time-limit." She frowned. "It's not as if these 'betas' will have experience with... well, 'war' is probably the closest approximation to our current predicament. And if you can't trust a soldier not to break and run in the face of their own mortality, then how can you expect untrained civilians not to do the same?"

It was a solid argument, based around the experience gained from a childhood spent in the proximity of a woman who was a legend in the military world, even to this day.

The boy hadn't expected it, staring at her dumbly with his mouth agape for a long moment.

"How old are you exactly?" He finally asked, his voice sounding more disoriented than confused.

Louise felt her face twitch dangerously. "I'm sixteen." She stated in a deadly calm voice, just _daring_ him to argue that she looked prepubescent.

The boy opened his mouth to do just that, regardless of her silent warning, when something in her voice finally registered to his dense awareness of the danger that he was in and he hurriedly shut his mouth again.

There was a silence for a long moment as all three of them returned their attentions to more important matters, such as the delicious bread and cream that the boy had provided for food.

"Thank you."

Louise blinked, turning towards the boy who was looking at her with such... open eyes. There was guilt, relief, awe, shame, embarrassment, resolution, and kindness, all mixed up until it was hard to tell just what the boy was thanking her for.

Even so, Louise heard her heart suddenly hammering in her ears, and felt her face heat up at the sincerity of the attractive boy sitting across from her.

"You were in the beta." The cloaked girl stated in understanding, interrupting Louise's blushing and causing the boy to flinch quite obviously.

"I-I-..." Finally, giving up on his stuttering speech, the boy nodded with a defeated sigh. "I was."

Louise stared at him for a moment, weighing him and his actions as she knew of them so far, before nodding. "You're not a bad person." She declared simply, making the girl wearing a hood nod in agreement.

And, much to the more experienced boy's confusion, that was it. The rest of their meal was spent in a peculiar state of silent camaraderie.

XXX

Louise took a deep shuddering breath as her knees finally gave in. It'd been terrifying, and people had died, but in the end they'd won.

Then, as the exhaustion from the adrenaline rush slowly erased itself, the group began cheering.

Louise felt a smile twitch its way onto her lips. They'd done it. They'd taken the first step up the ladder, they were beating the game. It was a wonderful feeling.

"Why?!" A broken voice called out, interrupting the surrounding joy. "Why did you let Diabel die?!"

Louise blinked, her good cheer slipping off of her face as she turned to face the spiky-haired brute from before. The brute that was now glaring at Kirito.

"Let him die?" Kirito asked, sounding confused.

"Of course! You knew the technique that monster used! If you'd told us up front, then he would still be alive!" The brute shouted back angrily.

Whispers broke out amongst the players, everyone unsure of what to make of this new development, because the man did have a point... if you squinted.

Louise didn't feel like squinting, she was tired, and annoyed, and had been enjoying a good mood, and she just really wanted to pull out her wand and use one of her famous explosions to explode the man until he shut up. Of course, she couldn't do that.

"Diabel broke formation." She instead intoned, her voice easily breaking through the silent conversations that were developing. "Previous knowledge or not. That was nobody's fault but his own."

The spiky-haired brute turned towards her, glaring. "How can you brush it off like that?!" He demanded. "Diabel is _dead_!"

"And if we fight amongst ourselves, how long until we join him?" Louise felt her spine straighten, her face falling back into a cold mask. "We all came here knowing that we could die, Diabel discarded his own strategy and died for it. It was his choice, and regardless of guilt, Kirito at least _tried_ to warn him." She turned to the beta-tester. "How did you know?" She asked gently.

Kirito opened and closed his mouth a few times, before answering. "I fought monsters with katana skills several Floors up."

Louise looked at him for a moment, before nodding. "And you only noticed that the Boss would use it when you saw its sword?"

Kirito swallowed, looking guilty. "Yeah."

Louise turned back to the brute. "So he had barely a moment to register the change from the beta, before suddenly Diabel broke formation and got himself killed." She paused to let this sink in to her audience. "A moment during which he yelled to 'get back', and when his warning failed he then tried to use a Healing Potion to save Diabel's life." She sighed. "We're human, this game is changing, and pointing fingers to find someone to blame is going to get us nowhere." She glared at the brute. "And I'm getting sick and tired of you trying to blame others for things that were out of their control."

"Y-You!" The brute exclaimed, his eyes wide.

"I am a failure, a Zero, a hopeless person." She continued, her glare growing in potency as she recalled the hardships that she'd endured since entering the academy. "But at least I never blamed anyone else for my failures. Grow up, idiot. This isn't school, where you can point fingers and bully others. This is war, where you'll fight with your life on the line in order to survive."

There was a stunned silence as everyone stared at the seemingly-prepubescent girl who was wearing a rather scary face.

"So _that's_ why you're 'Zero'." Asuna completely shattered the serious mood, sounding like she'd finally understood something that she'd been trying to figure out, and smiling happily at having the secret revealed to her.

Louise felt her eyebrow twitch, and she sent a half-hearted glare in the girl's direction. "I was on a time-clock." She admitted, pouting lightly.

She could hear a few of the other players beginning to snicker at her excuse, but she was trying not to pay attention to them, no matter how hard she began to blush.

It was a good day to be alive.

XXX

Zero took a deep breath, enjoying the feel of the endless summer of the 59th Floor.

It'd been over two years since the game had begun.

Kirito was currently ignoring the wonderful weather for more important things; namely, emptying Asuna's picnic-basket. Zero had over the years spent almost a total of five minutes at actively being jealous of the girl's ability to turn even the simplest of ingredients into something amazing, but usually got distracted by remembering that Asuna was perfectly willing to share the masterpieces that she called food with the rest of her guild.

Perhaps that had played a large part in how they'd almost ended up calling themselves «The Food Protection Squadron», before Asuna managed to glare them down into a more... socially acceptable kind of name.

Of course, there weren't a lot of people outside of their guild who knew of this rather closely guarded secret from an embarrassed Asuna. There was Klein – who Kirito had threatened into keeping silent in an attempt to monopolize Asuna's cooking – there was Agil – who'd caught Zero drooling over a sandwich – and there was Argo – who couldn't be kept out of a secret no matter what.

So, the world continued to see «The Swords of Unity» as a collection of extremely skilled individuals, and not as a bunch of food-obsessed crazies. Which was good, really, since it helped Zero keep the meetings for the Clearing Group from spinning out of control.

She wasn't sure how she'd become the guild's leader, originally thinking that Kirito would've done a better job at it, with his previous experience in the game and immense skill with a sword. But Kirito was too easy-going, Asuna was too important – they couldn't allow their prime chef to become a target – and Zero had already displayed quite a few leadership qualities.

In hindsight, it was obvious that shouting down the 'idiots' for being idiots and making sure that no arguments came to blows, would've put Zero in a position fairly high on the charismatic food-chain. But it still surprised her a little.

Zero had after all, spent most of her life being regarded as a failure, and now here she was being admired as one of the best sword-users of Aincrad and possibly the single most diplomatic individual of the Clearing Group. It was a startling change from what had once been the norm.

The fact that Zero's diplomatic skills tended to revolve around glaring idiots down, pointing out obvious flaws in their strategy, and continuously reminding everyone that you never know information for certain and that she'd beat them up if they got themselves killed, really only proved that the players of SAO weren't a military so much as they were a bunch of people in a life-or-death crisis who didn't always get along.

The spiky-haired brute from the 1st Floor had abandoned the Clearing Group early on after attempting to butt heads with her a few too many times. Apparently, Zero had a much harder head than the man had anticipated.

Glancing over at her two guild-members, Zero found herself wondering how long it would take before they ended up as a couple. She was kind of really hoping that their confessions would at the very least not coincide with the time on which Klein had placed his money. That was a lot of col, after all.

They were an almost ridiculously small guild. In the beginning there'd only been Kirito, Asuna, and Zero, though they'd grown enough to accommodate a few girls that seemed to gravitate towards their guild's only male member – much to Asuna's silent frustration. Silica was a nice kid, and her «Feathery Dragon» Pina was amazing, and Lisbeth was one of the highest-level blacksmiths in the game – even if Kirito had destroyed more than one or two of her blades over the years, much to the girl's horrified despair.

Zero could honestly say that she wasn't entirely sure how they'd ended up recruiting Silica, as the little girl didn't really have an interest in becoming part of the Clearing Group, and had generally only been on their friend-lists until Lisbeth dragged her into their guild-house one day.

She really wanted to hear the story behind that, Zero mused to herself, fighting down a smile at the memory.

Out of five members, three fought on the front lines, one worked in her store, and the final one had declared herself as their collective little sister and could usually be found trying to keep an eye on things.

Zero had a hard time imagining their guild either losing or gaining another person. They were a family.

Yes, Kirito and Asuna had a tendency to flirt obliviously even if they weren't a couple, Lisbeth would sometimes threaten people with her hammer because they'd gotten her wonderful equipment scratched, Silica's idea of cleaning up around the house was at times to sweep things under the rug, and Zero had on multiple occasions beaten the crap out of people for commenting on what age she looked like. But that was part of what made them fit together so well.

Kirito and Asuna became the newlyweds that hadn't technically gotten around to marrying yet, Lisbeth was the crazy in-law who had been administered a room of her own in order to keep the couch she kept crashing on semi-unoccupied, Silica was the adorably innocent youngest sister, and Zero herself had somehow become the usually-responsible eldest sister.

This was peculiar in that Zero barely looked any older than Silica, and that she'd grown up as the youngest in a family of three daughters. It also didn't help that her 'younger brother' could still make her blush with his sincerity at times.

All in all, Zero was confused as to how leadership fell on her shoulders, but she refused to let the position down, and so she marched on.

Of course, a summer day like this one ought to be properly enjoyed with tasty food rather than battle-strategy, she shamelessly pointed out to herself as she waved at the missing members of her guild as they appeared.

XXX

"My name is Klein, and I'm 24 and single." Klein introduced himself with a wide smile towards the girl.

Zero sighed at his regular antics. "Shut up, Klein."

"Hmm? What was that Zero-chan? Are you jealous?" The redhead turned his attention away from the girl who was by now halfway hidden behind Kirito.

"Who'd be jealous over someone like you?" Zero dismissed the question with a single raised criticizing eyebrow.

"Uwaah! Zero-chan, that's so cold!" Klein dramatically clutched at his heart. "After all that I've done for you!"

Zero stared at him for a brief moment before her lips twitched upwards, revealing an amused sparkle in her eye that shattered her usual apathetic mask. "To be fair, you've tried to steal my sandwiches." She reminded him.

Klein blinked, startled. "You can't hold _that_ against me! It was Asuna-sama's cooking!" He defended himself.

"And it should've been _mine_!" Zero yelled back, clutching at her sword in a way that made it quite obvious that she was very close to pummeling the man into submission with excessive force.

"Does this happen often?" The girl who'd accidentally started the argument wondered quietly.

Kirito turned towards her, looking confused. "Does what happen often?"

There was a brief moment of awkward silence, before Lisbeth finally spoke up. "Don't worry about it too much, you get used to it after a while, but only Kirito and Asuna are insane enough to actually take it to the point where they don't notice that it's happening at all."

"I-I see..." The girl fidgeted.

"Really, they're harmless. I've got a bet going that they're totally getting together within the year." Lisbeth grinned cheerfully.

"Liz-chan, making money off of people's love life isn't nice." Asuna scolded her friend with a vaguely disapproving frown.

The blacksmith shrugged. "It's not like they don't know about it, heck they betted against me. Klein said he would only fall for her after one year and at least another day, and Zero kept insisting that she was already in a steady relationship with your cooking, and that nothing could sway her from its side."

Asuna turned an embarrassed red, but was spared from commenting as Kirito snapped his head around, looking like he was about to cry. "You mean I can't eat Asuna's food?!" He sounded absolutely horrified at the prospect.

Silica grinned at the older girl who was currently being ignored by the rest of «The Swords of Unity» as a random crisis developed on behalf of Asuna's cooking supposedly dating one of their members. "It's great fun, really. Even if they're idiots." She assured her.

The girl turned towards her, looking awkwardly nervous. "Y-You all seem so close..." She trailed off, throwing a glance at Kirito who was currently begging on his knees in front of the guild's chef, trying to convince her that she should stop providing food to their selfishly food-dating guild leader.

Silica followed her glance, and allowed herself a sigh. "Kirito-nii, you're so dense..." She shot the girl a sympathetic grin. "I think everyone here has had a crush on Kirito-nii at some point." She paused, glancing over at Klein, who had also gotten dragged into the argument. She fought down a decidedly un-angelic smirk. "Possibly even Klein-san. You can never know for sure with that guy."

The girl turned red. "E-Everyone?"

Silica blushed a little herself at the reminder. "He saved me and he gave me back Pina. It was... nice." She shook her head a little in order to clear it. "But yeah, even Zero-neechan had a bit of a crush on him once. She got over it though... not sure how." Silica frowned, wondering briefly if she could somehow blackmail the girl into telling her how she'd managed to get over the boy so easily. It was unfair, it'd taken Silica almost three months of exposure to the 'newlywed aura' to quell her own crush.

"I see..." The girl nodded silently, obviously recalling her own encounter with the gentlemanly handsome «Black Knight».

"Zero-neechan is the official leader, because she's good at commanding. But it's Kirito-niisan who brought all of us together..." She felt a smirk reappear on her face as she watched Asuna finally explode at the idiots who were trying to worship the ground she walked on. "Though I think it was Asuna-san that turned us into a family."

The girl followed her gaze, and there was a slightly pained expression on her face as she saw the boy she was obviously developing a crush on, beg another girl for food that he 'wanted to eat everyday'.

Finally she shook her head and smiled at the younger girl. "Thank you Silica-chan, for explaining."

"I-It was nothing." Silica blushed lightly, trying to dismiss it.

"Thank you nonetheless." The girl easily countered her dismissal, before stretching slightly. "But I think it's about time that I find the others, before they begin to get worried." And with a departing wave, Sachi disappeared in the direction of the rest of her guild.

XXX

"Do you think we should make them pay rent?" Zero asked her 'little brother' curiously, as she considered how much time Silica had been spending with «The Black Cats of the Full Moon» as of late.

"You want to make money off of her?" Kirito spluttered indignantly.

Zero seemed to think about that for a moment, before shaking her head. "No, if we need funding we'll just blackmail Klein like always." She assured the boy. "I'm just not entirely comfortable with Silica possibly being in danger."

Kirito frowned thoughtfully. "We could simply lay down a few ground rules over where they're allowed to go, and explain to them our reasoning." He tried.

"Maybe." Zero shrugged. "But we'll need to convince Silica not to find technical loopholes or actively ignore the rules."

"She wouldn't do that." Kirito argued.

Zero raised an eyebrow at him. "Kirito, _I_ would do that, and I'm pretty sure you would too. It has to do with being stubborn, and wanting to be relied upon." She shook her head. "Therefore, we need to make it seem as if her best way of being useful and relied upon is to actually follow the rules."

There was a few moments of silence in between them as they both pondered this problem.

"We should probably just tell her." Kirito finally pointed out with a tired sigh. "It'll be easier for all of us in the long run."

Zero nodded hesitantly. "Fine. I'm not going to argue against that. Just know that I'm totally blaming you if this blow up in our faces."

"You _always_ blame me." Kirito argued with a frown.

Zero looked affronted. "No, I don't. Usually I blame _Klein_."

XXX

Silica shook her head in amusement as her elder siblings began listing the rules that they'd finally settled on being enforced to the leader of the friendly guild.

It annoyed her a little that they didn't think that they'd be capable of _not_ getting into trouble, but at the same times she knew just how overprotective Kirito could be. Hell, if Asuna hadn't already been fighting next to him, he'd probably have tried to argue that the girl ought to be on the sidelines where she wouldn't be in danger.

Her big brother could be kind of stupid like that.

Then again, she understood the danger. If they'd gotten caught in a trap above their level and been unable to leave, it wouldn't be strange for them to all die. Silica didn't want to die, and even if Sachi had become more confident in her battle against the fear of her own mortality, they all knew just how very valid that fear was to have in Sword Art Online.

Still, having the two overprotective idiots begin listing things like "Don't let her near perverted old people." Silica could feel a rather intense blush rising to her cheeks.

XXX

Zero nodded to herself as Asuna began to outline the plan for this particular Boss. The idea of luring it into the town where it would kill off NPCs instead of the players was sensible. Ruthless and morally in the gray zone, but it held merit.

Kirito spoke up, interrupting her. "You're just going to sentence them to death?" He demanded, frowning.

Asuna flinched a little, not wanting the boy she loved – even if she still hadn't admitted to it, meaning that her and Klein's bet was still in motion – to be angry at her.

"Kirito." Zero broke through before the other girl could do anything more. "It's not a kind tactic, but I'd rather have the Boss kill things that will _get better_, than for it to kill players."

Kirito opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again, frowning in a mixture of frustration and guilt. He nodded.

Asuna's expression was one of sympathy as the planning continued, and it didn't take the two of them long before they found themselves standing next to each other, visibly finding some manner of comfort within the other's presence.

Zero gritted her teeth. If those two ended up as a couple this weekend, she'd owe Klein 6 000 col. She really didn't want that kind of money to be thrown at the idiot just because the newlyweds couldn't wait with getting together until the weekend _after that_.

Klein noticed her expression, glanced over at the oblivious semi-couple, and then met her eyes, smirking evilly with a gleeful look of anticipation on his face.

Zero forced herself to pay attention to the strategy-meeting, lest she draw her sword and attack the annoying idiot. Some days were hardly worth getting up in the morning.

XXX

Zero stared at her two 'subordinates' for a long moment.

"So, let me get this straight. There was an incident where people were being PK-ed in Safe Areas?" The two of them nodded, so she continued. "And when you investigated it fully, it turned out that it was all a ruse to bring out the killer of a member of the victims' former guild?" Another nod caused Zero to sigh. "I'm not sure if I should applaud your investigation skills, berate you for not informing others of the potential dangers, or ignore this entire incident completely and hope that nobody complains to me about how the two of you handled it."

Both members of the idiot-couple at least had the grace to look sheepishly guilty about it.

"Zero-neechan, you're going to ignore anyone who _does_ complain just so that you won't risk being able to eat Asuna-san's cooking, aren't you?" Silica stared at her leader with a suspicious expression on her face that didn't speak highly of Zero's perceived integrity in the matter at all.

Zero tried to keep her face straight, but had some issues with meeting her adoptive little sister's eyes. "O-Of course not! I would never do such a-... such a dishonorable thing!" She stuttered out, lying rather obviously.

Kirito suppressed a snicker as Asuna scratched her cheek, embarrassed but kind of a little happy too at the endless amount of praise her cooking received.

Silica grinned at her snickering big brother, and decided to poke a little bit of fun at him. "Well, at least Kirito-niisan didn't seduce anyone this time."

Kirito's snickering broke off into a choking cough, and Asuna sent a brief glare over at the boy at the reminder of his – fully accidental – way with women.

XXX

Zero glared at the older man.

"I'm sorry? Did you say something to my subordinates, Heathcliff?" She asked in a voice that was painstakingly polite.

The man didn't look cowed. "I'm curious in regards to Kirito's ability to dual wield. So I challenged him to a duel. Is there a problem, Zero-san?"

Zero took a deep breath, not wanting to show just how angry she was at the man's challenge. Yes, it sounded rather benign when the man put it like that, but Zero knew better than to look at the surface of such things.

Firstly, a battle between two of the supposed 'strongest players' could cause horrible friction between their guilds, as the guild of the winner looked down upon the guild of the loser, as well as the loser feeling resentful to the winner. That by itself would've been enough to make Zero oppose the duel. They really couldn't afford to cause any more friction than there already was amongst the Clearing Group.

Secondly, this would become a spectacle. There was no denying that whoever won, it would be spread all across Aincrad, weakening the fame of the loser, and turning the winner into a target for those jealous of their skill.

Thirdly, Kirito and Heathcliff were both prideful. Both refusing to back down from a challenge, both seemingly incapable of not going all out. And Kirito, even now, years after the betas had lost their advantage of foreknowledge, wasn't regarded entirely peacefully due to his status as one of them. What kind of new problems would him using his dual wielding in view of the general public cause?

Fourthly, Zero didn't like the idea of seeing Kirito get hurt, no matter if it was barely noticeable, or if it could be healed with a single potion. He was her little brother, and she worried a little over him.

The four reasons were all easy to understand, though the politics of the first three of them would most likely fly over a lot of people's heads.

The worst part of it all however, was that if she tried to dismiss the duel by acting as Kirito's guild leader, he would be upset. Because Kirito was probably looking forward to fighting something that wasn't monsters.

Zero continued to glare at the man who was the reason for her giant headache. "Heathcliff, if I find that your intention with this duel is anything but what you say, I will destroy both you and «The Knights of the Blood»." She ignored the nervous shuffling of the witnesses. "Are we clear?"

One of his eyebrows rose slowly. "I thought you were opposed to the idea?"

"I am. But if Kirito has already committed himself to fighting you, then anything I might do to stop it will only serve to cause friction within my guild. And that is something that I refuse to do without a very good cause." Zero explained herself.

"And so instead, you threaten my guild?" He sounded more curious than disapproving.

"I threaten the integrity of your guild, yes. Because if it's a choice between turning a famous organization on its head, or letting my family get hurt without repercussions. Then my choice is easy." Zero answered, meeting the man's stare head on.

The man smiled, looking strangely approving. "If that were to happen, I will not blame you, Zero-san. After all, family is important."

Zero gritted her teeth and forced a smile onto her face. She really really really wanted to beat the crap out of him until he gave up on the idea of fighting her little brother, but she couldn't do so without endangering her own reputation pointlessly. And with more than 25 Floors still left to Clear, they couldn't afford it.

She hated politics.

XXX

Zero frowned.

"Kirito, sit down." She motioned at the couch.

The members of their guild glanced between each other as they entered their home, trying to figure out why their leader looked so upset. Sure, Kirito had lost, but that shouldn't make her this serious, should it?

Kirito hesitantly seated himself on the couch.

"How did you lose?" Zero asked him bluntly.

There were some indignant noises coming from the rest of the girls at her confrontation of the boy for something like losing, but she ignored them, focusing instead on the boy in front of her.

Kirito hesitated. "I-... I don't know." He admitted with a distracted frown. "It was... weird."

Zero nodded, as if she'd expected as much. "How was it weird?"

"Right there at the end, he moved fast. Faster than I think should be possible." He shook his head, trying to shake off the unsettling image of that one moment.

The rest of «The Swords of Unity» stared at the two of them, looking suddenly unsure of their original defense against their guild leader's bluntness.

Zero groaned, burying her face in her hands. "Dammit, that's what I thought too. That moment was creepy." She sighed. "But at least that meant that you won't be getting any crap from the regular players over being too strong 'just because you're a beta'." She tried to look at it from the bright side.

Liz made a choking noise. "W-Wha-? What do you mean?"

Zero glanced up, startled. "It's obvious, isn't it? If Kirito would've won, he would've been declared as 'the strongest player', and since he's one of the betas, that would've caused a _lot_ of potential friction between those who still blame them foolishly." She explained. "It's part of the reason that I disliked the idea of the duel in the first place."

Her 'subordinates' stared at her, jaws dropping.

"Y-You-... You actually thought that far ahead?" Silica finally spoke up, looking a little bit awed.

Zero frowned. "Is that supposed to be a dig at my leadership skills?" She demanded in the voice of a big sister moments away from administering punishment for younger siblings who didn't believe in them.

"N-No! Not at all!" Silica hurriedly excused herself, not wanting to get her cheeks pinched. "It's just..."

"We hadn't been considering the political ramifications." Asuna explained.

Zero let her frown drop, slumping backwards in her own chair. "Sorry." She sighed, throwing a tired smile at their youngest member. "I keep forgetting that you guys usually just let me deal with these things."

Kirito shook his head, still looking a bit surprised at her admission to political prowess. "So, what'll happen now that I've lost?"

"Heathcliff will be stealing ground on my reputation as «The Diplomat», which means that there'll probably be a bit more friction in the Clearing Group than what we've gotten used to. And there's a high likelihood that our guild as a whole will be looked down upon, since our strongest player has lost to the strongest player of «The Knights of the Blood»." Zero shrugged. "There might be more, but those are probably the most obvious reactions."

Asuna plopped down next to the boy, looking exhausted. "Well, at least the whole thing is over now."

The rest of the members grinned at her, knowing exactly what was going to happen in mere moments.

Kirito's stomach growled.

Asuna hung her head with an exasperated sigh, whilst the rest of them tried to keep themselves from laughing at her. After all, it wouldn't do to anger their chef.

XXX

Zero sighed resignedly. Apparently the recruiters to «The Knights of the Blood» didn't look for brains when they went recruiting.

"I don't care what your subordinate seems to believe, but if he challenges a member of one of the single most high-level guilds that exists, he shouldn't be trying to blame them for breaking his sword." Zero tried to point out reasonably. "I mean, once-defeated or not, Kirito was still in the running for the title as the strongest player of Sword Art Online."

"We can't allow something like this to happen without reprimands!" The man in white argued.

Zero carefully raised a single eyebrow at his words, staring at him critically. "Really? And what punishment is this 'Kuradeel' facing for his challenge?"

"His punishment is none of your concern." The man easily dismissed her question.

Zero allowed herself a smile. It was a cold one, the kind of smile a shark would wear at the smell of blood. "I see? Indeed, it should be the leader of a guild that punishes their subordinates, should it not?" Her eyes narrowed, the smile not wavering. "So why in the world are you arguing with my judgment?"

The man frowned, seemingly finally realizing his own hypocrisy. "Then why aren't you punishing him?!" But pushed on regardless.

"Because I frankly don't care about the shoddy weaponry of arrogant idiots." She admitted bluntly, startling those witnessing it.

Zero was called «The Diplomat» for a reason, the idea of provoking her to where she seriously began to act rudely to people meant that she'd classified the man as 'an idiot'. A classification that only a handful had gained since the spiky-haired brute from the First Boss had finally slunk off to lick his wounds in peace. To have her classify a high-level member of «The Knights of the Blood» as one was... potentially grounds of what might actually be turning into a feud between the two guilds.

A feud between one of the most traditionally influential guilds, and one of the largest. In the middle of the Clearing Group. It would _not_ end well.

Apparently, the man in question was beginning to realize that not only was he provoking a very influential person, he was doing it in a manner that made him appear as nothing but an idiotic hypocrite.

And so he hurriedly withdrew his demands for punishment against Kirito for defending himself in a duel that he hadn't started.

Zero kept the cold smile fixed on her face for the entire next hour. She might have won this round of impossible demands, but there would be more. Kirito had been defeated, and even if it was against the strongest player in the game, the sharks of Aincrad were smelling blood in the water.

The fact that the other members of «The Swords of Unity» were still admired by everyone didn't actually help matters much, as it became a case of 'removing the taint' as it were, or 'taking his place' in the guild of admirable individuals.

No, this was all far from over. And the thought of what it could cause further down the road held her stomach in an icy grip.

XXX

**A/n: In my usual way of doing things, this story is already completed, and following chapters will be published after having their contents polished a bit further.**

**This Crossover is partially inspired by: **_**Halkeginia Online**_** and **_**Making Magick**_**.**


	2. Chapter 2

Zero Online: Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

"Gah! This is tyranny! You tyrant!" Klein complained loudly.

Zero twitched, turning towards the man with a deceptively kind smile. "Hooh? Did you say something, _slave_?"

"Gurhk! No ma'am! I didn't say anything!" Klein hurriedly withdrew his complaints at the look on her face.

Zero beamed a smile at him, before commenting happily. "Then I suppose we should find the rest of the things on the list, shouldn't we?"

Bravely suppressing the urge to groan in misery, Klein straightened a little bit, shifting the insanely heavy groceries that he was being forced to balance precariously in his arms, as the celebratory shopping trip of victory-due-to-Kirito-finally-proposing-to-Asuna continued.

"Shouldn't this offend you guys?" Liz asked the rest of the «Fuurinkazan». "I mean, he's your leader after all."

"Nah, this is the idiot's own fault." Dale carelessly waved away her argument. "He shouldn't have placed a bet on something without the col to back it up if he lost."

"I'm more curious as to what this scene says about their relationship." Issin mused as he stared at the two guild leaders.

Liz followed his gaze. "I guess... I just figured that he was a masochist." She shrugged.

"Really? He acts more like a tsundere, I think." Dynamm tilted his head critically.

"Maybe he's both?" Harry One suggested with a thoughtless shrug.

There was some silence as they all processed that possible truth.

"So... what are the odds for that?" Liz finally asked, sounding innocent.

Dale turned to look at her for a moment, before grinning evilly. "How much col are you willing to bet?"

Liz's practiced innocence fell away, revealing an identically evil grin of her own. "I like the way you think."

Silica stared at the two guilds that were mingling happily with each other, and wondered – not for the first time – if her 'family' might not actually be a really bad influence on people. Of course, she wasn't going to voice her concerns on the matter, because watching their antics was quite literally the single most entertaining thing that she knew of.

XXX

"Umm... Zero-chan?" Klein tried to lure the small girl out of her hiding place.

"Go away." Came the depressively toneless response from the other side of the door.

Silica made a noise of frustration. "Zero-neechan! Just because Asuna went on a honeymoon and won't cook for you doesn't make it the end of the world!"

"Fool!" Roared their guild leader's muffled voice from within her bedroom. "How can I eat such disgusting things after having tasted heaven?!"

"Uwaah, harsh." Klein commented silently, shooting their newly appointed emergency-chef an apologetic look.

Thankfully, Dynamm was too busy with trying not to laugh to be all that insulted. Besides, he'd eaten Asuna's cooking once or twice himself, he knew that he couldn't compare. The girl was like a goddess in the kitchen.

"Oi! Zero! What kind of dishonorable behavior is it to look down on a man that is trying his best?!" Liz demanded in a disturbingly regal tone as she joined the others in attempting to convince their leader to come out.

Everyone turned to look at her in confused shock, but she simply motioned for them to be quiet and listen.

There was a long pause, before finally the door creaked open, revealing a vaguely guilty-looking Zero.

"'m sorry..." Came the childish mumble as the girl squirmed pathetically under their eyes.

They finally managed to convince her to eat her food without making faces at it after threatening to have Klein feed her like a kid. He was her 'slave' after all, and those had to make sure that their owners were eating healthily. Possibly.

XXX

Zero stared at the private message in confusion.

"Umm, guys?" She hesitantly called for the others' attention.

"What's wrong? Did something happen?" Silica looked at her worriedly.

Zero paused, obviously not sure how to word her concerns. "How long does pregnancy take?" She finally asked.

There was a long moment of silence.

Liz stared at her with a disturbed expression. "What."

"I asked how long pregnancy takes." Zero responded tonelessly.

"Nine months." Silica answered her cautiously.

Zero stared at her message for a long moment. "That's what I thought too." She made a face. "Maybe it works differently in Aincrad?"

Klein made a strangled noise. "Why do you say that, Zero-chan?"

"Because they've barely been gone a month, and they've already got a toddler." Zero explained, still staring at the message, eyes wide in horrified wonder.

Liz's jaw dropped open. "How daring! Was their innocence just for show?!" She cried out dramatically. "What cunning!"

"I really don't think that's what happened." Klein cautiously pointed out to the blacksmith. "Those two are way too stupid to pull something like that off."

There was a brief moment of silence as everyone turned to look at Klein with critical expressions.

"I'm not sure you're one to talk, leader." Dale finally pointed out heartlessly.

Ignoring how Klein was now clutching at his heart in despair for his reputation, Zero continued to read the message. "Her name is 'Yui'." She remarked with a completely unmoving expression. "It's a nice name."

"Umm, maybe you're missing some information?" Silica tried hesitantly.

"Yeah! That's got to be it! No way would Asuna-chan give in to Kirito's dark lusts so easily!" Liz desperately latched on to the idea.

The members of the «Fuurinkazan» shared glances, before Issin finally spoke up. "Not to sound rude or anything, but I'm pretty sure that it would go the other way around. That guy is insanely innocent."

As Liz crumpled in over-zealous despair at her 'sister' being the one with dark lusts, and Klein continued with his dramatics over being viewed as an idiot even by his own men, Zero finally put away the message that had caused it all.

"That's it! Guild leaders are supposed to be informed about stuff like this way before it gets to this point!" Zero declared with fiery eyes. "I'm going to interrupt their honeymoon!" And marched off.

Obviously, this all sounded _far_ too interesting for the others not to follow her.

XXX

"Asuna-sama! Cook for me!" Zero begged as she jumped at the girl in question, causing the girl to squeal in surprise.

"She completely forgot why we're here, didn't she?" Silica asked rhetorically to the rest of them, fondly exasperated at her big sister's antics.

She didn't get an answer, as Klein was too busy kneeling in front of Asuna and randomly praising her in hopes of being included in the food that Zero managed to mooch off of her, Liz was glaring heatedly at Kirito's sword – which looked a tiny bit worn – and the rest of the «Fuurinkazan» were exchanging money between them – looking a mixture of exasperated and amused.

Silica made a noise of vague despair. Her family members really _were_ a bad influence on people.

"Zero-san! Why are you here?" Asuna finally managed to calm down enough to form proper words.

Zero paused in her begging for scraps, looking thoughtful. "I don't remember. It was important, but I got distracted." She admitted honestly.

Kirito snorted at her bluntness, whilst Asuna merely sighed.

"You decided to interrupt their honeymoon because it was your duty as a guild leader to be informed of children having been conceived _before_ they'd already become toddlers." Silica reminded her when she realized that nobody else was going to.

Zero blinked, suddenly remembering her earlier indignant rage. "I remember now! Kirito, how dare you not inform me that you turned me into an aunt?!" She turned towards the black-haired boy.

"Heh, you're in trouble now, kiddo." Klein commented smugly from behind Zero's back.

"I'm pretty sure he _did_ actually inform you, Zero." Liz pointed out. "He sent you that message after all."

Zero rounded on her subordinate. "That wasn't informing me at all! That was mentioning in passing that they had a toddler! That doesn't count! I should be allowed to make gooey eyes at babies! I'm an aunt!" Zero declared, eyes just a little bit wild.

"Mama? Who are they?" A sleepily curious voice asked from the door to the house, interrupting whatever response that the married couple might've provided to their slightly hysterical guild leader.

Klein's jaw dropped open, Liz's eyes nearly fell out of her head, Silica made a soft noise of startled confusion, more money changed hands between the members of the «Fuurinkazan», and Zero turned to stare in silent wonder at the adorable child peeking out of the picturesque house.

Zero liked kids. Okay, that wasn't really especially obvious with how she usually acted, what with threatening to lit them on fire and other rather extreme behaviors, but she _did_ like children. Especially those that were either too young to actually piss her off, or those that somehow managed to not piss her off even when they got old enough that their peers would've.

So yes, Zero did like kids. She was rather picky about them, and she wasn't always the best person for dealing with them, but that didn't make her any less fond of them.

And Zero was an aunt now. Her stubbornly brave little brother had had a daughter with a girl that was a goddess of the kitchen. And the girl that must be 'Yui' looked adorable.

Thus, perhaps it shouldn't be all that surprising that Zero immediately quieted down so as not to startle the girl that was her niece. Her actual niece. A little kid that she could spoil all she wanted and then blame her later behavior on her brother's parenting methods.

"Ah, hello." Zero began tentatively. "I'm Zero, I'm your papa's big sister." She gestured towards the rest of them. "The girls are my family, the males are a bunch of idiots who are kind of funny."

Klein made an indignant noise. "I take offense to that!" He muttered, also not wanting to be too loud in the presence of a child that he wasn't sure was comfortable around him. "I'm _definitely_ funny! No 'kind of' about it!"

"Notice that he didn't argue about us being idiots." Dale noted with a defeated sigh.

"Oi! Leader! Don't just randomly accept people calling us idiots!" Dynamm silently hissed his complaint.

"We're not idiots?" Harry One inquired curiously. "Whoa, you learn something new every day."

Issin casually smacked the man that was pretending to be stunned at this new knowledge over the head. "Idiots or not, I'm going to agree with Dynamm here. Don't just randomly agree to it, leader."

Kunimittz tilted his head thoughtfully. "But who is the greatest idiot? The idiot? Or the ones who follow the idiot?" He asked philosophically.

There was a brief moment of silence as everyone pondered this newest of revelations.

"Maybe it's the one who taught the idiot how to be charismatic?" Harry One finally suggested.

"Are we seriously having a philosophical debate over something like this?" Dale glanced in between his guild mates, looking both amused and annoyed.

Yui, having been distracted from answering the beautiful young woman with long pink hair by the discussion that had broken out amongst the «Fuurinkazan», finally returned her attention to the one who called herself papa's big sister.

"Are you my aunt?" She asked hesitantly, suddenly remembering the proper terminology.

Zero smiled, a happy warm soft smile that caused most who knew her to stop breathing in disbelief. Zero could smile, of course, and she was easily amused, but she didn't look... _motherly_ when she smiled, she usually looked like a devious devil up to no good.

"Yeah, and since your Kirito's daughter, that makes you my niece." Zero continued, gentle smile not wavering from her face.

Yui beamed a smile at her, looking happy to be referred to as her papa's daughter. "My name is Yui." She introduced herself, suddenly recalling her manners.

And as Zero stared into her large and innocent eyes, she couldn't help but wonder cheerfully if having kids wouldn't just be really kind of wonderful.

Klein fidgeted uncomfortably. "Whoa, why did I suddenly get the shivers? Did someone walk over my grave?" He muttered quietly to himself, not noticing how Liz had heard him and was for some reason looking terrifyingly amused.

XXX

It was warm, a little bit soft, a little bit sharply uncomfortable, and suffocatingly heavy.

Zero wrinkled her nose at the feeling. It felt like it should be horrible and she ought to move away, but she didn't want to. She was comfortable, despite how uncomfortable her position was. It was a paradox.

As her wrinkling nose developed into a vaguely pained frown at being confronted with paradoxes when her head was still all fuzzy, Zero wondered at what point she'd fallen asleep.

She could remember eating Asuna-sama's heavenly cooking, she could remember kicking Klein in the shin for some reason that probably made perfect sense at the time, she could remember having it explained to her just how she'd so suddenly acquired a niece, and she could remember that the «Fuurinkazan» had apparently bet on how it would've been explained. Apparently, Liz lost her bet – which sounded like it had involved a very convoluted plot that had given her _fantastic_ odds as a result – and had taken to sulking in a corner somewhere.

Zero forced her obnoxiously heavy eyelids open, a little bit annoyed at being unable to remember going to bed.

Long, silky black hair, remaining softly unmoving inches away from her face.

Zero blinked slowly, hoping to get rid of the gritty feeling in her eyes. It didn't go away, and neither did the mass of black hair.

Shifting slightly in order to get a better view of her situation, the young guild leader found herself staring down at her niece, still sleeping in her arms unconcernedly. They were on the couch, and it looked like someone had covered them with a blanket at some point. Thus, Zero concluded that they'd most likely accidentally fallen asleep the previous day – there was sunshine shining through the windows in a very dawn-like manner – and been declared as either too adorable or too obviously comfortable to be woken up.

Zero couldn't blame them, Yui looked cute enough when she was awake, and with the way that she was smiling softly in her sleep, it was horribly unfair to anyone wanting to wake her up.

Not wanting to be the guilty party of removing the girl from her so obviously pleasant dreams, Zero sighed, slumping back into the couch.

She didn't have anywhere she was supposed to be today... she could afford to be a little bit lazy every now and then.

Her eyes slipped closed.

XXX

"So we're going to find where she came from?" Silica asked curiously. "Does that mean we're going to the church?"

"You've been there before?" Kirito asked, surprised at this new information.

Silica blushed. "Ah, well, I'm still pretty young so... yeah... but I-... I couldn't stay there." She shook her head to clear away the frown that developed at the memory. "I couldn't just sit around and do nothing."

Liz grinned at her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders in a friendly manner. "And that's why we love you. You're just as stubbornly stupid as Zero and Kirito." She paused thoughtfully, ignoring the way that the two she'd mentioned were now glaring at her. "Asuna is more of a case of being way too nice, I think. Much better than the two stubbornly noble idiots over there."

Silica giggled awkwardly, trying not to anger any part of her guild, but at the same time not wanting to outright defy the girl whose arm was within strangling-distance of her neck.

"Hah! Zero-chan is an idiot!" Klein pointed gleefully at the girl whose eye was now twitching dangerously.

Zero slowly began to draw her sword. "I see. I believe it's time that I teach my foolish in-law some proper behavior." She mused with a perfectly blank face. "And I suppose it wouldn't be out of the question to chastise an idiot for opening his mouth at the same time."

Liz's hold around Silica's shoulder stiffened noticeably. "... Ehehe-... N-Now, now Zero... that's n-not necessary... r-really!" The girl's voice trembled, her eyes not wavering from their guild leader's white-knuckled grip on her sword.

Klein was starting to back away, face pale, and eyes nervously darting around looking for exits.

Then they were off. Two against one, and both utterly failing to do anything but dodge frantically as Zero unleashed her suppressed fury on them. The girl had a tendency to build up frustration from all of her interactions with people that she was politically incapable of beating up, meaning that this outlet was probably really good for her health.

Then again, it was clearly detrimental to Klein's and Liz's, considering the terrified screaming echoing across the entirety of the Floor.

Kirito stared after the three of them, a feeling akin to exasperatedly fond annoyance on his face. Then he sighed and walked over to pat Silica on the head in order to calm her down from her obviously trying ordeal.

Silica was convinced that when they returned to the real world, she was going to have to fight Kirito's cousin with everything she had in order to properly monopolize these big-brother-pats on the head. There was no way in hell that she was ever going to let them go without a fight. And possibly without being permanently crippled.

Stubbornness ran in the family, after all.

XXX

"Zero? Why have you Mastered your Poison Resistance?" Liz stared strangely at the girl who'd been completely unaffected by Klein's sneaky retaliatory strike. Thankfully, she'd calmed down by now, so there was no worry that Liz's laps in attention would allow the girl to land a hit.

Zero looked away, blushing lightly and mumbling something unintelligible.

"Oi, speak up. I can't hear you." Liz frowned at the girl.

"I was trying to raise my Cooking skill!" Zero yelled, glaring heatedly as her face was enveloped in an embarrassed red.

Klein blinked at the sudden exclamation, tilting his head in confusion. "But how would that-...?" He trailed off, eyes slowly growing horrifyingly wide. "I'm never eating anything you cook. Ever." He finally declared with absolute resolution.

Zero glared at him, fists twitching for her sword once more, but then obviously restrained herself and decided to do something constructive instead by getting back to the cottage and mooching more food off of Asuna.

There was a moment of silence as Liz and Klein both stared after the girl's retreating form.

"I guess this explains why she's so obsessed with Asuna's cooking." Liz finally admitted. "If my cooking turned out badly enough for me to _Master_ my Poison Resistance by eating it, I'd probably be obsessive about it too."

Klein nodded his head in sagely agreement.

It also explained why she kept trying to stab him whenever he hinted at how she ought to be cooking her own meals. In hindsight, he would've totally tried to stab himself too.

XXX

The Starting City looked a lot like it'd done two years ago.

Oh, there were less people around – since the remainders of Aincrad's player-population had scattered itself over more than seventy different Floors – and the gloom of despair that had been so prevalent during the first month had evaporated, but in general, it all looked the same.

Zero hated every second spent there. It was a reminder of how she'd stumbled her way into something because of her own failure, a reminder of her own inability to cope with the change, her inability to stand resolute regardless of the situation. It was a reminder of how Zero had originally gained her name, how her name had once been yelled in mockery and contempt, as opposed to the now awed voices of the masses, or the loving ones of her family.

It was a reminder that Aincrad wasn't Zero's home, and that ten thousand others had been trapped in here along with her.

Zero spent most of their journey through the Starting City, trying to keep her bile from spilling out on the street as her stomach knotted itself into a horrible mess of unpleasantness.

It seemed like she was pretty much the only one with that issue however, and she wasn't going to speak up about her own weakness. Not for something like this, where her life wasn't on the line, and where she would merely be regarded as fragile and useless if she gave voice to her feelings.

She'd come a long way from the terrified little girl who believed that she'd somehow managed to Summon herself into hell, but seeing the many reminders from those days was making her feel dirty. As if her progress as a person had been built on the despair and loss of so many others.

Zero really really hoped that they would be done there soon, so that she could return to their guild house, to their home, and she could curl up in her room and not-cry and try to get over all of the tangled emotions.

Finally, they ran into a pair of brats – and no, they were definitely not kids, kids didn't try to flip girls' skirts – who guided them back to the church, the home for the children of Aincrad. The sanctuary for those too young to understand the repercussions of what was happening around them.

Zero kind of liked the place. She'd never visited the place during that first month, so there was nothing in it to remind her of that time. It was still filled with brats though, so she wasn't planning on sticking around if she could help it.

Ignoring Klein – who still had a red hand-print on his face after commenting on her choice of suddenly-exposed underwear – in a manner that told all those watching her that she wasn't planning on letting her grudge against him and his uncouthness die anytime soon, Zero found herself a place next to her niece, where she didn't have to pay attention to the newlyweds interrogating the childrens' caretaker.

She didn't really care where Yui had come from, or how she'd made it to the 22nd Floor, or why she didn't have any memory of her life before, because Yui was her super-adorable niece, and she wouldn't trade her for the world.

Finally, it was decided that Yui hadn't been seen by any of the other children, and as such couldn't have spent any large amount of time on the First Floor, so it was time for them to move up a Floor, and hope for better luck there.

Saying their goodbyes and thanks for the help, «The Swords of Unity» and the «Fuurinkazan» began their return trek. It was too late in the day to make it feasible to search the next Floor, so they were going back to their beds for the night, and hopefully Zero wouldn't be having any dreams in which she was crushed hopelessly by despair and forced to watch as people simply stepped off the ledges and fell to their inevitable deaths.

She wasn't getting her hopes up.

Absently trying to keep her thoughts from spiraling downwards, Zero nearly stumbled as she saw something she really wished that she hadn't.

The ledge.

The ledge from which countless players had willingly tumbled to their deaths. She felt her stomach clench, and forced down a shudder. She didn't mind Aincrad, really. It was a nice place, a place where she felt welcomed, a place where she wasn't a failure. But she knew that there were those who thought differently, those who saw it as nothing but a hopeless pit in which they'd all been trapped.

Then she saw Yui flinch, the little girl's eyes not wavering from the edge as they begun to widen in horror.

Zero was barely aware that she'd moved, her arms already having wrapped themselves around her niece as she used her own body to block the girl's view of the ledge.

Yui remembered that. Of all the horrible things that she could remember, Yui remembered _that_.

Zero nearly started crying, and only the fact that she needed to get Yui somewhere warm and protected and _safe_ kept her knees from buckling.

The rest of their return was a blur to her, and she wasn't sure who was comforting who, or when Yui's trembling had died down, or when they'd made it back to the cottage, or when the two of them had been guided onto the couch that they'd claimed the previous night.

But when she woke up in the middle of the night – not because of a nightmare, but because of a sudden irresistible urge to open her eyes – and found a blanket wrapped around the two of them, an idiotic redhead snoring softly from his spot on the floor next to them, and a Yui that was still capable of smiling contently in her sleep, Zero knew that she was loved.

Happiness and relief mixing together into a complicated mess, she buried her face in Yui's hair and made a note to blame lack of sleep if anyone commented on her eyes being red in the morning. Crying was such a useless thing to do.

XXX

They spent the next week, searching the Floors, trying to find a lead on where Yui came from, or an explanation for the reasons of her amnesia.

They found nothing.

This was a set-back, a complete loss, but it also meant that there was nobody else that could claim family to steal away their Yui. Zero allowed herself to feel a little bit pleased at that, knowing even as she did so, that she'd feel guilty about it soon enough.

Similar feelings seemed to go through Yui's adopted parents,and even though Liz had bet against it – and managed to lose a ridiculous sum of col as a result – she didn't seem to mind beyond her usual dramatics.

They were allowed to keep Yui, and none of them could honestly think of that as a bad thing.

XXX

They'd been put on baby-sitting duty. Which was actually not nearly as bad as it sounded, since Yui was a sweet kid, and Klein was really just an older kid, meaning that whenever Zero reached her point of tolerance for childishness, she could just dump her on him, and spend some time doing other things.

Of course, with Liz tending to her shop, Silica off with the «The Black Cats of the Full Moon» catching up with her friends, and the «Fuurinkazan» having excused themselves on behalf of 'making money', this left only Zero and Klein in the guild house with Yui.

The reason for why none of them were with the newlyweds was kind of obvious if it was actually considered. The two of them were still technically on their honeymoon, having been interrupted mid-way by adopting a child and being intruded on by their eccentric guild leader.

Yes, Asuna and Kirito were planning on at least having one final day all to themselves before the official end of their honeymoon arrived.

Thus, Zero and Klein were on baby-sitting duty.

Shaking her head with a vague smile at the chaos that the two children still indoors were causing, Zero took a deep breath, enjoying the clear air of the balcony, and – most importantly – the calm of not being indoors with them.

Naturally, it didn't take long before the feeling of calm began to fade into the feeling of disruptive boredom, and so Zero was forced to find something to occupy herself with until she'd fully recovered from her ordeal of chaos-exposure and would be able to return indoors.

Finally settling on going over her Inventory and Skill list, Zero found a chair from which she could enjoy a view out over the rest of the Floor, absently scrolling through the Items, Skills, and Stats that had turned her into the warrior that she was.

It was strange sometimes, to imagine what people would think of her back home, back in Halkeginia. Despite her current ability in battle, she was really just a swordsman, and sometimes she wondered how she would've fared against a mage from her home-world.

A mage was capable of many amazing things with their magic, but they needed to be quick enough with their wands to aim at their targets, and even so, with the way Health worked in Sword Art Online, they would need to be able to hit her plenty hard before there would be any danger in it for her, whilst a sword back home was still very much something that could kill if you hit a person with it in the right spot.

It was a bittersweet feeling. She'd achieved so much, become content without magic, become content with her name being 'Zero', and when the game was beaten and she would return to her own world, a world that wasn't shared by any of her family, she would still be considered as nothing more than a failure. A female noble incapable of even the smallest feats of magic. A commoner posing as a noble.

Even her skills with a sword, should they remain with her, would be looked down upon. Because only commoners would lower themselves to fight with something as primitive as a sword, when a noble could mold magic into whatever they wished.

It just-... Zero wasn't sure if she was really hoping to return to Halkeginia, if she really wanted to end the game of Sword Art Online, if maybe they could all just stay here and live happily together.

It was foolish, and she refused to voice it. Because people were dying, people were fighting for their lives, and how could she ever deny so many the need to meet their loved ones again? How could she ever deny her _family_ the right to see their loved ones again?

Still, their victory would be bittersweet to her when they reached it. The defeat of the Boss of the 100th Floor, that would let everyone rejoice, would be the end of her life here. She would never meet her family again, she would return to Halkeginia, or maybe she would really die this time? She still didn't really understand how she'd ended up in Aincrad to start with, other than her obvious failure at the Summon Familiar spell.

Of course she still missed her sisters, _both_ of them in fact – and boy she'd never imagined that she would feel that way about Eleanor – but in comparison to how the rest of the world would treat her... they didn't really cancel each other out. She would love to visit them, to talk to them, to explain herself to them, to grit her teeth and ask for their mother's blessing in whatever she wanted to do now that she would obviously be kicked out of the Academy for her failures.

But at the same time, she knew that she was the youngest daughter of the Valliere family, and her name was too important to be seen wandering the world like a commoner, making a life for herself as a mercenary or a foot soldier. No, Louise would be married off to someone willing to accept a noble without magic into his bed, married for a grab at her family's prestige.

The thought sickened her.

So whilst she missed her blood-family in Tristain, she didn't want to return. She wouldn't mind visiting, if she could somehow return to Aincrad and the people that inhabited it once she'd paid her respects, but she didn't want to return to her home-world and live out the rest of her days there.

Groaning in annoyance at the realization that she was brooding, instead of calming down from the mental strain that was caused by baby-sitting Yui with Klein, Zero rose to her feet, taking a final deep breath of the clear air before turning back towards the door.

What she found once she finally made it indoors wasn't what she'd expected however.

Klein was standing in the kitchen, patiently explaining to Yui what he was doing as he fiddled with the confusing mechanics that the players who were capable of such things usually referred to as a 'stove'.

After the self-depression that she'd just experienced, it was a very welcome scene, even _if_ Zero really ought to have laughed at him. Because he was wearing an apron that he quite frankly looked ridiculous in, and he was trying to teach Yui how to cook, despite being barely above Zero's own level – which was usually considered to be in the _negatives_ – in Cooking.

But she didn't laugh. She remained in the doorway, staring, mouth slowly falling open as something strange moved pleasantly within her chest.

And when he finally realized that she was there, turning towards her with his always-friendly grin, she realized something. Something that she had never imagined that she would.

She wanted to see him teaching their own children how to cook.

And even as her face turned red in embarrassed mortification, she couldn't help the warm smile that made its way to her lips in return to that grin.

There were a hundred Floors, and they hadn't even made it to the 80th yet, there was still plenty of time. Time to spend in the presence of her loved ones, and time to perhaps learn a little bit about a different kind of love.

The kind of love that made marriage sound like an... interesting thing to experience.

XXX

Zero took a deep breath.

"Alright, considering how there weren't any survivors amongst the scouts, it's a Trap Boss." She frowned. "It's also capable of killing a large number of Clearers in only a few minutes, so there's a high chance that it will ambush us, and a certainty of it being able to hit fairly hard."

Heathcliff nodded solemnly. "It'd be better to be prepared for an ambush, and for it not to happen, than the other way around." He agreed with her.

They continued to discuss possible precautions to take, wanting to make sure that they were as well-prepared as absolutely possible to face the Boss of the 75th Floor. This wasn't looking to be an easy win by any stretch of the word.

It was also giving Zero a very uncomfortable feeling of something bad just about to happen, and she kept remembering how Yui had hugged her parents tightly when it was decided that they were returning to the Clearing Group. So tightly as if she was terrified that she would never see them again.

The thought left an icy weight in her stomach, and not even stealing a glance towards the unusually-solemn Klein was enough to fully dispel it.

She would protect her family, with her life if she must. She longed desperately for the comfort of at least knowing if the man felt the same about her, so that she could take a deep breath and get on with it already. But there was no time, and she couldn't afford to distract him.

They were advancing on the Boss of the 75th Floor, to fight with their lives on the line.

And maybe, just maybe, she hated Kayaba a little bit extra for this.

XXX

It was on the ceiling, staring down at them like Death itself. All bones and sharp blades.

Zero felt her skin crawl, her hands clenching around her sword so hard that her knuckles were turning white in an effort to keep them from shaking.

"Don't stay together! Stay away from it!" Heathcliff bellowed, forcing the stunned Clearers to scatter across the area.

And as they scampered away, two fell. Instantaneously cut down by a single swipe of its sickle-like claw.

Barely sparing a moment to let her eyes widen and force some strength back into her buckling knees, Zero darted around the Boss just as Heathcliff took that same claw head-on, barely flinching at the lethal pressure.

He was the strongest player of Sword Art Online for a reason, it seemed.

But the Boss didn't want to play nice, and instead of going after the one person capable of blocking it, the Boss slipped past him and continued its chase of the more vulnerable players.

Kirito managed to block it in order to protect another player, and Zero used his provided distraction to land a Sword Skill at the terrifying creature.

And then they were off, the battle for freedom had commenced anew, as the higher-level players worked together in order to block the Boss, whilst the weaker players landed as much damage on it as they could, before hurriedly removing themselves from its range.

She ought to have hated it. Hated the monster for killing her kind-of subordinates, hated it for attempting to kill the people precious to her. She ought to feel rage.

Yet, the sound of swords echoing across the area, the inhuman roar of their enemy, the shouting of orders, the cries of determined fury from her allies, the terror of barely dodging an attack that would've killed her without effort.

She kind of loved it. Just a little bit.

Perhaps it was the blood of a warrior, passed down to her from her mother. Perhaps she was merely insane. Regardless, even as terror gripped at her heart, as horror lodged in her throat at the agonized screams of her peers, the thrill of the battle sang to her. And its melody was burning into her soul.

She would never hate the Bosses, despite the players who'd been felled by them. They were merely monsters, automatons incapable of doing anything else. There was no purpose for hating them, no sense in doing so. So for every death a monster caused, she hated the one who created it in the first place.

Her feelings for Kayaba Akihiko were a mixed up mess of admiration, hatred, thankfulness, and friendly rivalry. They were beating his game, and sometimes when she looked up to the imaginary sky, she would cackle gleefully and imagine that she was making the man kneel and grovel before her.

No, she loved Aincrad. She loved it even whilst she hated it.

Adrenaline pumping through her veins, in terrified, horror-struck excitement, the fighting continued.

XXX

"Fourteen died." Came the soft-spoken death toll from a shell-shocked Kirito.

Zero flinched, trying to keep herself from listening to the whispered doubts that were breaking out around her.

A warm arm suddenly wrapped itself around her shoulders, as Klein tried to comfort her from the dawning realization that there were still _25 more floors left_.

It was a useless gesture of comfort, but she curled into the man's embrace anyway, because it was better than the empty chill that was permeating the area.

"Klein?" Her voice sounded so weak, so fragile, as she stared up into the face of the man she'd fallen in love with.

"It'll be alright, Zero-chan." Klein's usual grin was hollow, too aware of their odds at survival to be comforting.

She didn't care. "Klein... don't leave me?" She could feel the tears rising in her eyes, and she hated them, hated herself for feeling so scared at the thought of being left alone.

Klein's eyes momentarily widened before suddenly growing soft. "Don't worry, Zero-chan." His grin stopped being quite so hollow. "I'll always be here. No matter what."

Blinking away the tears that were slowly trailing their way down her face, Zero kissed him.

She wasn't sure why, exactly. She didn't want to appear needy, or weak, or as if she only wanted him for comfort. But for some reason she got the feeling that if she didn't kiss him right then, she would curse herself for it for the rest of her life.

It wasn't the best kiss, she was sure, but it was wonderful in its own desperate salt-flavored way. It was their first kiss together, her first kiss with _Klein_, which somehow made it endlessly more wonderful.

But there weren't any cat-calls and silly whistling, because Kirito had picked up his sword.

And its edge encountered the Immortal Object that suddenly appeared in front of Heathcliff's face.

In the stunned silence that followed, the birth of a new couple wasn't worth paying attention to, even to the two lovers in question.

Because Kayaba Akihiko stood in front of them, wearing red armor and a white cape.

The Final Boss of Sword Art Online had been exposed.

XXX

Unable to move, the paralysis keeping her from doing anything but watching, Zero gritted her teeth and watched as her little brother fought alone against the 'god' of this world.

Her tears had begun falling again, only this time Klein couldn't hold her in his arms until they didn't matter, because he lay next to her, crying, cursing as he watched his friend struggle against a man so far above his level.

It happened so fast that Zero would've missed it if she'd blinked. One moment they were fighting, the next Kirito found himself shielded by a body as his sword shattered against Heathcliff's tower shield.

Asuna took the hit that was meant for him.

The fighting halted immediately, with Kayaba curiously watching the girl who'd somehow managed to overcome his paralysis to save her loved one, and as Kirito watched the girl he loved die in front of him.

Zero was sure that she must've shouted something, because her throat was raw. She was sure that she must've tried to do something, because her muscles were cramping. And she was suddenly absolutely convinced that she hated Kayaba Akihiko with every fiber of her being.

Because Asuna scattered into light, and the happy girl who'd given her Yui as a niece was no more.

And somehow the colors were draining out, movements turned into blurs, and the pounding of her heart demanded her to crawl to her feet and _kill_ killkillkillkill _kill_!

But she couldn't move, she couldn't move, she couldn't move, shecouldn'tmove shecouldn'tmove _shecouldn'tmove_!

Then Kirito rose to his feet, and dazedly swung his sword at the man who had killed his wife, the mother of their child.

Kayaba sighed, before seemingly without effort at all piercing the boy through his heart, and Zero could do nothing but scream.

Her little brother was dying. And she was forced to simply watch.

A final desperate war-cry echoed across the area, and Asuna's rapier pierced through the Final Boss' chest, driven there by the last will of Kirito, «The Black Knight» of Aincrad.

As of 14:55, November 7th, the game has been cleared.

XXX

She could feel the pull, the sudden feeling of being removed from where she was.

It was the same as back then, when her Summoning had gone so completely wrong, but it didn't seem to hurt as much this time, as if it was merely going through memorized steps that it'd previously been fighting to accomplish.

Thousands of nodes of light were racing past her, all of them carrying a name. The players were being set free.

Yet, something was strange. There was a net, a barrier, a trap, ensnaring some of the nodes of light.

Someone was interfering with Kayaba's final mercy.

The very idea of it was enough to make her blood boil, but she couldn't do anything, she didn't have a sword with which to cut through the ensnarement, she wasn't even sure if she had a body with which to swing a sword.

But she couldn't simply stand back and pretend that nothing was happening, she needed to do _something_.

And somehow, she raised her incorporeal hand at the trap, and she poured something at it that she hadn't felt for over two years. She poured _everything_ at that trap, until she was so hollow as to echo.

The last thing she saw as the trap was shredded completely was Yui meeting her eyes from where she clung to her papa's node of light.

She was her niece, and of course she wasn't just another player trapped within Sword Art Online, because their strange little family never did anything so normal. Zero threw a grin at her through her tears.

_Tell Klein, I love him._

Then she was caught in the backlash of the shredded net, and everything was pain.

XXX

**A/n: And so the SAO-arc of this story is concluded.**

**Interesting fact: ****«Poison Resistance****»**** doesn't exist in SAO, but I didn't look it up when I was originally writing it, and it's a good explanation for Louise to not try to become independent with her own Cooking Skill so I kept it around anyway.**


	3. Chapter 3

Zero Online: Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

The smoke burned her lungs, and her coughs came out a lot wetter than what was probably healthy, but she could glimpse blue sky through the smoke.

She wasn't sure how she knew it, she wasn't sure how she'd done it, but she was back. She was back in Halkeginia, in Tristain, the land of her birth.

Everything hurt, and she couldn't really move, so she simply stayed put and watched as the sky was slowly reveled as the smoke dispersed.

She was at the Academy, everything looking just the same as when she'd left. Kirche was standing with that fire salamander of hers, and that big dragon that the Tabitha girl had summoned was watching her curiously. Even the professor was there, his eyes wide in shock.

"... Professor?" She blinked slowly, feeling strangely tired for some reason. "You're really really tall..." Her lips twitched upwards in amusement, before another cough wracked her body, making her gasp for air through the sudden pain.

"Miss Valliere...!" Colbert hurried to her side, looking distraught. "Hold on! Someone, get a water mage!"

Zero curiously raised an eyebrow at the man, not really registering what he was saying through the blur of her vision and the heavy pounding of her heart. A mage? Why would he want a mage? There wasn't even anyone injured, was there?

Then her blurring vision began to turn dark, allowing her to slip free from the pain and into blissful unconsciousness.

XXX

The setting sun was shining in through the window as Zero finally wrestled her eyes into opening.

"Mhmph... it's bright..." She promptly closed her eyes again, confident that if there was anything important that needed to be done then Liz would know well enough to close the curtains before trying to wake her once more.

There was some rustling as someone moved the curtains, and the light lessened marginally.

"Louise." A voice spoke, making Zero's head a little fuzzy.

She didn't know anyone named 'Louise', did she? No, wait, that was _her_ name. Right, silly of her. She shouldn't forget her own name, even if she _was_ Zero. It was a simple name, much easier to remember than 'Louise', and it was hard to remember that she had once carried another one.

"Mhmph?" So maybe she wasn't awake enough to form truly coherent sentences, but she had a headache and she felt like a giant walking bruise.

"Louise." This time with a little bit more force, a tiny touch of iron discipline.

Something in Zero's mind screamed at her that waking up was suddenly of dire importance, so she once again began to wrestle with her far too heavy eyelids.

Her mother sat in front of her, staring down at her with attentive eyes.

Zero felt her hand twitch for her sword, subconsciously wanting to be armed in front of the woman who was capable of being so utterly terrifying. Of course, her sword wasn't there. And neither was her armor, or her usual clothes.

Eyes widening in paranoid panic, Zero glanced around the room that she'd woken up in, desperately searching for the items that she'd so painstakingly gathered over the course of two years of endless battles. There was a pile of clothes on a chair, a broken sword lying on top of it.

Zero gave a small sigh of relief, even as she winced at the state of her loyal partner. It'd been a good sword, a sword that had belonged to her for quite some time now. And it'd broken, whether it be through the transit or if she'd banged it up somehow when she'd been struggling against Heathcliff's paralysis, she couldn't tell. But it would never be used in battle again, and the thought saddened her.

Then, adrenaline fading at the realization that her equipment was safe, Zero was forcefully reminded of the pain that had made her reluctant to wake up in the first place. Suppressing the urge to curl into a ball and cry as the pain shot through her abdomen, Zero returned her gaze towards her mother.

The woman observed her with coolly appraising eyes, analyzing her every action.

Zero felt her lips twitch in amusement, suddenly remembering how she'd turned a similar gaze on the players of Sword Art Online, and how it had caused them to fidget nervously. Liz had so painstakingly tried to sit up straight that she'd nearly fallen off her chair.

Her mother raised an eyebrow, clearly noticing her amusement. It was hard to tell if she was surprised, approving, or annoyed. It was quite likely a mixture of both.

She felt her amusement turn into a warm smile. "I've missed you." She confessed.

The second eyebrow joined the first one, reaching for the fierce woman's hairline. Now she was definitely surprised.

"I see." Came the calmly collected response, showing no hint of surprise, her face – with the exception of her eyebrows – still remaining perfectly blank.

Zero found herself considering how her mother might've dealt with the dangers of Aincrad, a world without magic. And was suddenly forced to fight down a grin at the thought of her meeting Klein and his charming idiocy. "You would've hated him." She mused silently, shaking her head in exasperated wonder, still fighting down a smile.

Her mother's eyes narrowed, clearly catching her words somehow, and obviously interested in the idea of her youngest daughter interacting with someone that she would've hated. Zero would've cursed herself for saying it out loud, but she really _had_ missed her mother. They weren't close, Zero had spent most of her school years endlessly disappointing her, and she'd on numerous occasions believed herself moments away from being disinherited. But she was her mother, and she'd always been able to at least seek indirect advice from her by going through Cattleya.

So, instead of trying to find excuses and cowering at her mother's pointed interest, Zero merely sighed.

"It doesn't matter." And it really didn't, because he was in a different world, a world with only a single moon, and in which magic was the stuff of fiction. Her smile fell from her face as she returned her gaze towards the pile of clothing that was apparently everything that she'd brought back with her.

A sudden thought occurred to her. "Asuna-sama won't cook for us anymore." She felt a little bit stunned at that. "Liz won't be able to collect on that bet I lost..." She continued, not really paying attention to the her mother's quiet form. "Silica won't complain about us being overprotective... the «Fuurinkazan» won't act silly... Kirito won't get into fights with people over stupid things..." She felt something burning in her eyes as her voice began to waver. "Yui won't c-call me aunty... K-Klein won't-... h-he won't smile-..." And suddenly she was sobbing, unable to keep the tears from flowing, unable to finish her final goodbyes to the people that had been her family for over two years.

She wasn't sure when her mother had put her arms around her, hugging her tightly, but she hugged her back desperately.

She wanted them back. She wanted her family back. She wanted her niece back to spoil. She wanted her little brother back to make fun of. She wanted her little sister back to show off in front of. She wanted her in-law back to butt heads with. She wanted Klein back. She wanted him to be there, to smile at her, to hold her, to tell her that everything was going to be alright, to tell her that he loved her back.

But he wasn't there, all that she had was a mother that had always been far-removed from her life, an icy mother that was now in a hospital room holding her in her strong arms as she cried.

XXX

"How is she?"

Karin turned to her daughter, feeling the heaviness of the situation and confusion mixed together weighing down on her. "I don't know." She answered,, admitting her own inability to assess the mental and emotional state of her youngest.

Cattleya's brows furrowed. "I heard crying." She fished for information.

Karin frowned as she remembered Louise's tears. "She acts... oddly." She finally stated, not sure how to explain how the girl was speaking of people she'd never meet again, that Karin was fairly certain that she hadn't met in the first place.

An 'Asuna' who cooked? It was possible that she'd befriended the help somewhat, but surely she would've spoken about it in her letters to her elder sister – letters whose content that Karin had at least managed to get a vague idea of by questioning their receiver. A 'Yui' who called her 'aunty'? What kind of breech in protocol was that? Who would be allowed to do such a thing? Not to mention, why would she call her 'aunt' when Louise was still so young?

It was all a jumbled mess of confusion. Who were these people that her daughter spoke so fondly of? Why had Karin never heard of them before? Where did they come from? Why was Louise so convinced that she would never see them again?

Alright, so her daughter was probably intelligent enough to realize that if she failed her Summoning she would be dropped out of the Academy, meaning that any bonds she'd made there would be swiftly severed. But it wasn't as if she wouldn't be able to search her friends out later, to properly say goodbye, or to befriend them anew.

"'Oddly'?" The girl worried.

Karin shook her head, trying to clear it from the numerous questions. "Did she ever speak of friends, in her letters?"

Cattleya flinched, suddenly uncomfortable. "N-No. No, she didn't." She shook her head, looking sympathetically pained at the thought of her sister spending her school years alone.

She wanted to sigh, she really did. Of course she'd known that her daughter hadn't been quick to make friends, she'd in fact been slightly worried at her inability to socialize with her peers, but had comforted herself with how hard the girl must instead be working on figuring out her dysfunctional magic.

And now, it looked as if all of her daughter's hard work would be for naught. She would be expelled, and if tradition was to be followed, she would be hurriedly married off to the highest bidder.

Because what use does a family have for a magic-less noble, other than as a political pawn?

The thought made her grit her teeth.

She might not be the kindest of mothers, and she knew that she wasn't the warmest. But she had always wanted her children to carve out their own lives, without interference, without family-politics. And now Louise would be dragged into it all, despite her wishes.

Gesturing to her daughter that she was free to enter the door from which she'd just left, to see her little sister if she so wished, Karin swept out of the room.

She needed some air, and possibly a good target for venting her angry frustration at how the will of the Founder had touched her daughter's life.

XXX

Zero was aware of her entering, but the red sky left behind by the setting sun was hard to look away from.

She'd been held in her mother's arms as she cried. She'd been comforted, and she'd perhaps given some manner of comfort back to the woman she so admired.

Really, when had she turned into a crybaby? Crying was such a useless thing to do, and now it felt like she couldn't help doing it.

But at least her chest felt lighter, even if her eyes felt rough and her nose felt clotted. It was strange, how she was thankful that her mother had been the one to see her break down so utterly.

Her mother who sometimes seemed more akin to a statue wearing human flesh, than a person in her own right. Zero thought she could understand the woman a little, having lived through the front-lines of Aincrad, and having played the political game so that the rest of her guild could do whatever they wanted to.

It was better to cry on the shoulder of a woman who'd seen cruelty in life before, to find comfort from someone who could understand and who could still stand back up after she'd shared with her the weight of her mourning a little.

Which was why she was glad that she felt too worn out to mourn when her older sister carefully entered the room.

Cattleya was just as womanly beautiful as always, and perhaps there was the tiniest sting of jealousy in that, but it was muted from both the tiredness and the peculiar knowledge that Klein wouldn't suit her at all.

They might've been able to get along, and Klein might flirt with her – like he did with everything that was female – but she was certain that the spark wouldn't be there. That Klein would remain hers, Zero's.

That thought drew a small smile to her lips, even through the pain of remembering the man that she would never meet again.

"Louise? Are you alright?" Cattleya asked cautiously.

Zero felt herself shake off the heaviness of depression that was beginning to get to her. Klein would've wanted her to do something stupid, something silly, something that brought smiles to the faces of both herself and everyone around her. So Zero did the only sensible thing; she decided to stir up some chaos.

"I just miss my little brother." She sighed a little theatrically, hiding a smirk as she saw her sister get appropriately confused.

"'Brother'?"

Zero nodded. "I mean, sure he can be kind of annoying, and he has a tendency of getting into fights, and he's got this thing where he accidentally wins the hearts of everyone female within ten miles, but he's a good guy." She suddenly made a face. "He's also a little bit overprotective, and super-stingy when sharing Asuna-sama's food." She huffed at that, remembering how often Asuna had ended up stopping them from fighting over her cooking by threatening _both_ of their food-supplies.

"Umm? 'Asuna-sama'?" Cattleya was starting to look extremely confused.

Zero blinked. "Oh, my sister-in-law." She explained. "Her cooking is amazing." She paused for a moment, recalling their latest meal, and nearly starting to drool, her eyes filling with an odd zeal.

"What?" Cattleya sat down on a chair, too confused to remain standing.

Zero grinned at her, slightly gleeful at her ability to mess with her sister's head.

"Yeah, he got married a few months back, their daughter is really adorable." Zero nodded. "Totally takes after her dad."

"Heeh?" Cattleya was now unable to form coherent sentences, so Zero decided that she should probably cut her some slack.

"Don't worry about it." She waved off the girl's panicking confusion. "It doesn't matter anyway."

"B-But...!" Cattleya met her eyes, looking distraught.

Zero took a deep breath, realizing that she'd probably gone a bit too far with her teasing, and decided that she should probably explain the whole thing from the beginning. "It might sound crazy, but... when the Summon Familiar spell went wrong, I got dragged somewhere else. I spent two years in a world without magic. A world created by a madman who wanted to play god." She shook her head, not really bitter about it in hindsight. "We were all trapped there, but I was the only one from a world that had two moons. I found a family there, of sorts. A bunch of noble idiots who refused to let the madman win. A little brother, a little sister, a sister-in-law, an in-law with a gambling addiction, an adorable niece-..." She trailed off. "And when the madman lay defeated, I woke up back here."

Cattleya's mouth was hanging open, and maybe she should've tried to explain it to her mother, if only so that she could've gotten the chance to see the normally so composed woman look so utterly shocked. But she'd needed comfort more than humor, and it wasn't as if she was planning on keeping it a secret from their mother, so she might still be able to catch a glance of it at a later date.

"I'm not-... 'alright'." Zero shook her head slowly in answer to the first question her sister had asked upon entering. "I'll never see my second family again. And that hurts... it hurts a lot." She paused thoughtfully. "Other than that, I'm probably going to be expelled from the Academy since I didn't manage to Summon anything, so mother and father will be forced into marrying me off to whoever will have me." She grimaced. "Really not looking forward to that." She confessed.

"Mother and father wouldn't do that!" Her sister argued feebly.

Zero sighed tiredly. "We are the Valliere family, Cattleya. It's what nobles do. And even if our parents will try to make my husband a good one, he won't be-..." She felt her throat catch, her eyes beginning to burn again.

Cattleya blinked, staring at her for a long moment before moving to sit on the side of Zero's bed. "You fell in love?" She asked with a gentle smile.

Zero nodded as her fists clenched, and was suddenly pulled into a hug.

"It's alright. We'll just have to convince them that your lover will come for you, someday soon." She assured her.

Zero wasn't sure it was going to be quite so simple, since there wasn't any magic in Klein's world, and that with them being stuck in separate worlds there was a high chance that the two of them would end up discarding the love that had grown over those two years, and simply move on with their lives.

Still, it was nice to listen to her big sister whispering soothing hopes for love into her ear.

XXX

Zero made a heavy noise, mumbling something unflattering to the sun and all of its family-members and choice of company. She didn't want to wake up, she'd been having a nice dream, filled with cute nieces, stupidly noble siblings, and a smiling man wearing a ridiculous apron.

There was a knock on the door.

Zero groaned in betrayed agony. Truly, she lived in a cruel world, where she wasn't allowed to sleep-in even when there shouldn't be any need for her to get up and glare at idiots and tell them to stop picking on her little brother.

"Valliere?" Came the muffled voice from the other side of the door, sounding peculiarly familiar for some reason.

"G' 'way! L't m' sleep!" She protested pathetically.

There was a pause on the other side of the door, as if they weren't sure what to make of that.

Which meant that it wasn't any of her family from Aincrad, because they would've totally known how to react to their guild leader trying to sleep in. Even if Zero thought that the bucket of ice-water was a bit over the top.

The door opened, proving that whoever wanted to speak to her was at the very least willing to brave her sleepy fury. That gained her some points.

"Louise?" The girl asked again, her voice sounding even more familiar now that the door wasn't muffling it.

Zero frowned, trying to remember where she'd heard that voice before.

"Z'rbst?" She finally realized groggily.

"Umm, good morning." The girl belatedly settled on a greeting.

Zero fought her way up into a sitting position, ignoring the vague, lingering pain in her chest, wanting to see what the other girl had come here for.

Kirche was still just as busty as always, but she didn't seem like she was trying to flaunt it consciously, judging from the conflicted expression on her face.

"Morning?" Zero narrowed her eyes at the girl. "You call this ungodly hour 'morning'? What is wrong with you?"

Kirche opened her mouth, but then closed it again, looking a little bit stunned at the turn that the conversation was taking. "Classes would normally start within a few minutes from now." She argued.

Zero snorted. "That just means that the world is filled with crazy people who want to torture the unsuspecting!" She waved her fist a little, trying to demonstrate just what she thought of that.

A small smile made it onto Kirche's lips. "Oh? I never thought I'd hear such a thing from you, Valliere." And her voice had fallen back into the teasing tone that she usually reserved for their confrontations.

Zero immediately felt better. She'd actually missed the girl's slightly cruel teasing, especially in the early days of Aincrad, before her family became annoying enough that she didn't feel like she was missing out on their fights.

Giving up on suppressing her small smirk, Zero shook her head in mock sadness. "And that's why you will never be as amazing as me."

Kirche blinked, looking shocked, before her smile turned enthusiastically happy. "Ah, so the Zero believes herself above me?" She challenged.

Zero started to laugh.

It was just too funny, to have someone use her name as an insulting title.

"Of course not, Zerbst." She giggled. "That would be _undiplomatic_."

Kirche blinked, confused at the girl's sudden amusement.

There was a moment where Kirche was too unsure to speak, and Zero to hopelessly amused to do anything but laugh. Then Kirche finally sat down in a chair, and turned uncharacteristically serious eyes at her.

"You failed your Summoning, Louise."

Zero fought herself out of her laughter to meet the girl's gaze. "I know."

"You will be expelled." Kirche continued, slightly hesitant.

She nodded. "I know."

Kirche frowned. "What will you do?"

Zero paused at that. She hadn't really thought that far.

She wanted to spend time with her blood-family, she wanted to tell them of her adventures and experiences in Aincrad, she wanted to dodge marriage until she was absolutely convinced that Klein would never come for her, and then continue dodging it until she fell in love once more. But what was she going to do? Be a burden on her family for the rest of her life? Join the military? Try to find a job that she could actually do?

What _could_ she actually do? Could she still wield a sword like she'd used to? Was her cooking still capable of being used as an improvised poison? Had she learnt anything from her years within Sword Art Online other than politics and swordsmanship?

She wasn't sure.

Zero opened her mouth anyway. "I will wander, I will search, I will wait." She told the girl with all of the sudden confidence of «The Diplomat» of Aincrad.

"Wait for what?" Kirche asked after being silent for a long moment.

Zero smiled absently, wearing a slightly sad expression on her face. "For an idiot." She turned towards the window, seeing the two moons still lingering in the sky. "There has to be a way to see him again."

For a moment, the hospital was silent, as Kirche stared at her with wide eyes, mouth opening and closing.

Zero blinked at the sight of it from the corner of her eyes, turning back to the girl who'd teased her so endlessly.

"Louise." There was a certain level of awe in her voice as the silence was shattered. "Your eyes are burning."

Raising an eyebrow at the odd behavior, Zero wondered if perhaps the girl had hit her head on something.

Then Kirche was hugging her, laughing happily, and ignoring Zero's startled squeak at her sudden action.

"I will support you no matter what." Kirche assured her with strange determination. "I'm the Ardent after all! And such wonderful passion will always have my approval!"

The rest of Kirche's visit was an insane jumble of passionate speeches, leering insinuations, and happy approval. And afterwards, Zero was startled to realize that she honestly couldn't see the girl as an enemy. It was all very strange.

XXX

"What do you mean 'she doesn't exist'?!" Klein demanded of the man in front of him, somehow managing to look and sound threatening even from his hospital bed.

"There's nobody who has registered under the name 'Zero'." The man explained, clearly uncomfortable. "Everyone is accounted for, but there simply isn't any player who went by the name of 'Zero'."

Klein opened his mouth to argue against that, because he knew Zero, and calling her a hallucination was insane, but then his cellphone rang.

Blinking dumbly at the interruption, Klein grabbed the offending item and checked the caller ID.

"Kirito? What's going on?" He asked the moment he answered the call.

"They're telling me that Yui doesn't exist. Neither does Zero." Came the deadly calm voice from the other side of the line.

Klein was suddenly immensely happy that he had not been the one to tell Kirito that his daughter wasn't real. He was also pretty sure that if they hadn't all atrophied to the point where walking was like running the marathon, then the person who'd ended up telling him would've ended up in a hospital bed of his own.

"I just heard about Zero." He confessed. "Is there anyone else you've heard that are missing?"

"No. It's only those two as far as I can tell."

Klein took a long moment to try to think up an explanation for that, before a thought occurred to him. "What about Argo? Do you think there might be something that she'd know about it?"

Kirito considered it for a moment. "I'll have to check. I-..." He paused, sounding uncertain. "There's actually... one other..."

Klein frowned, not liking the boy's sudden hesitance. "Who?"

"Heathcliff... Kayaba committed suicide long before Heathcliff died within SAO."

Gulping heavily as his mouth turned dry at the possibility that something similar might've happened to Yui and Zero, Klein closed his eyes. "Ask Argo, ask her to look for _anything_ that might be strange about them, you hear me?"

There was a grunt of agreement from the other side of the line. "I will."

XXX

Zero stared at the tasteless blob that the chef apparently thought was food.

Perhaps it really _was_ time to experiment with how badly her Cooking Skill carried over into this world? Her stomach certainly agreed with the idea, even if her legs felt shaky, and the pain in her chest still lingered... it wasn't as if she couldn't cook a meal just because she was injured, was it?

Then again, considering that her cooking had forced her to Master her Poison Resistance, perhaps she ought to wait until she was healthy before risking her health and hoping that her Poison Resistance Skill carried over as well.

But that meant that she ought to actually _eat_ this stuff. Zero fought down a sudden shiver of despair. She'd fought monsters, she'd fought Bosses, she'd fought players once or twice, and she'd fearlessly butted heads with Heathcliff, the mad god of Aincrad himself. Yet, the idea of eating this 'food' filled her with an inescapable sense of dread.

"Umm, miss?" She turned towards the maid that had delivered it, looking uncertain. "Is this stuff really edible?"

The maid blinked, first surprised at being addressed, then surprised by the question. "Of course it is!" She sounded a little bit upset at the notion that it wasn't. "The chef worked really hard to make a healthy and tasteful meal." She assured her.

Zero glanced back to the tasteless blob that she'd barely managed to eat a single bite out of. "And the chef is really competent, yes?"

"Of course! He's the greatest chef in all of Tristain, barring only the chef of the royal palace." The maid answered, frowning suspiciously at her.

Zero made a sad noise of crushed dreams. "I was afraid of that." She admitted with a silent whimper.

The maid's frown wavered a little at the girl's obvious distress. "Why do you ask?"

"Because it tastes like something _I_ would've made." Zero admitted. "And the last time I was in a kitchen, the fumes alone was enough to kill all of the plants in the house." She'd gotten into trouble for that, actually. Liz apparently enjoyed having the plant-life alive and healthy.

The maid was looking a little taken aback about something. "You've tried to cook? But miss, you're a... a noble."

Zero paused at that. It'd been a long while since she'd actually considered herself a noble. Over two years of war, surrounded by only commoners, befriending only commoners, sharing family with only commoners, falling in love with only commoners... She'd lived her life as a human. Titles such as nobles or commoners were of no importance, because in the end they all fought and died the same.

"I was trying to be independent." She admitted with a shrug. "I'm just lucky that tasting the result of it didn't actually kill me outright."

"You-... your cooking was that bad?" The maid was starting to look vaguely amused by the notion.

"Yes. Which is why I'm hesitant of eating something that looks like my own cooking." Zero reminded her, sighing heavily. "I'd hoped that I'd be able to find a chef on at least Dynamm's level. But this is... probably on Klein's." She felt her face fall a little at the reminder of him.

"Dynamm? Klein?" The maid asked, sounding confused.

"Friends." Was the short answer that she was provided. "Their cooking at least wouldn't poison the eater... though Klein's usually got burnt... as if it'd been exposed to fire-dragons." She giggled a little as she remembered one particular fight the two of them had had over just what she was calling his cooking.

"I assure you, the chef is a lot better than that." The frown was back on the maid's face.

Zero sighed, her mirth slipping away. "At least tell me that the chef either dislikes me, or makes really tasteless food for sick people." She begged the other girl.

Upon receiving a negative answer to both possible reasons for her food being horrible, Zero disappointedly settled down to eat.

The fact that she ate the rest of her meal whilst crying with defeated softness for Asuna-sama's cooking just further proved to the maid that nobles were a very strange and rude breed of people.

XXX

"There was a rumor, back in the beginning, of a girl with long pink hair that would ask why there was only a single moon in the sky." Kirito relayed his findings from Argo.

"Zero-chan? Why would she ask around about that?" Klein frowned in confusion.

There was a sigh on the other end. "There weren't any evidence for any of the theories that sprung up, but the two most popular ones were that either the girl expected something more 'out there' than something so similar to Earth when entering the game, or the girl was actually an NPC with a quest."

"Zero-chan wasn't an NPC. No way. She was human." Klein bit out, feeling affronted, even when he knew that Kirito was agreeing with him.

"I know, but those were the two most popular... however, back when we met up for the First Boss, she said something. Not sure if it relates, but it might." He took a deep breath. "She said that she spent her first week in SAO believing that she'd died and gone to hell."

Klein flinched, startled at the idea of the cheerful girl he'd come to love, believing that the world that she would sometimes regard with such fondness had originally been something so horrible to her.

Then again, he remembered her reaction to spending a single day back in the Starting City. How small she'd looked curled up with Yui in her arms on that couch, still fighting down shudders and only barely reacting to the outside world.

"So she didn't take being trapped by Kayaba very well, that's kind of understandable." Klein prodded his friend to elaborate.

"Yeah, but the way she said it... Even people who broke down back then... they were trapped _in the game_. She was _in hell_. From the sound of it, it was like she wasn't even aware of having entered the game to start with."

Klein opened his mouth to argue that that was crazy, but paused. There were no players that had gone by the name of 'Zero'. Zero had definitely been there, and she'd definitely been more than a simple NPC.

"Is it possible that she was somehow 'scanned' into the game even without really entering the game? Like Kayaba must've been?" Klein finally asked.

Kirito made a thoughtful noise. "It's possible, but there doesn't seem to have been any _other_ coma patients that have woken up since we cleared the game. And I asked them to look around for a girl with pink hair, which gave me a few strange looks, but..."

"Nothing." Klein agreed.

"Yeah..." Kirito sighed. "Other than that, the only thing I know is that someone saw her react really strangely to the idea of the moon-landing."

"Strangely?" Klein asked.

"Extreme denial." Kirito elaborated thoughtfully. "Like she couldn't imagine the _idea_ of people making it to the moon, and that everyone was insane for believing it."

"So what? She's been in a coma since the 1960s?" Klein made a face at that, he was pretty sure she was eighteen, by the time the game ended, and that just wasn't possible with that kind of time.

There was some muffled laughter from the other side of the phone, as if Kirito had imagined what kind of face he would pull at the idea of Zero being _way_ older than him, and had found it amusing. "Doubtful. She was sixteen during the First Boss, and very defensive about looking younger than she was."

"Ah, right. Her chest-complex." Klein snorted a laugh at the memory. She'd damn near cut his head off for that.

There was a pause as both of them fondly remembered the fierce girl and her sometimes peculiar behavior.

"She always acted like she'd grown up close to the military." Kirito finally mused.

Klein groaned at that. "I'm not sure if that narrows it down, or just widens the possibilities."

Kirito paused on the other line. "What if... what if she really never _did_ know anything about the moon-landing? What if she somehow got pulled into the game from... somewhere else?"

That didn't sound like Kirito was considering the idea of her being a coma victim. "You mean, like a different world, or time or whatever?" It was a stupid idea, but Klein was too worried about her for him to ignore any possible explanation for why he couldn't find her.

"It sounds stupid." Kirito sounded annoyed. "But-... if she got pulled into SAO, could she have... gotten stuck somewhere else?"

Klein felt a chill go through him at the idea of the girl being launched into a different game, a game where the people within it might not care if she lived or died, because they believed it to be just a game.

"We need to find her." He declared with determination. "We need to find her _fast_."

Kirito agreed.

XXX

Fiddling absently with the hilt of her broken sword, Zero wondered about what else the day would throw at her before it was through.

She'd returned back to this world at noon, slept until sunset, cried on her icy mother's shoulder over friends and family that nobody would believe that she'd had, told her loving sister of the world where she'd spent over two years fighting for her life, fallen asleep, been woken up by Kirche and accidentally made a friend in her, and realized that amazing food in her world was on par with Klein's cooking.

She'd barely made it through the first twenty-four hours, and she was certain that the food-related part of those hours would continue to haunt her, if only for the reason that it was highly doubtful that she'd be able to find any way to remedy the horrible situation in which she'd found herself.

Perhaps, this was a world in which her own Cooking Skill was classified as Average? What a terrifying thought.

Suppressing a shudder, Zero went back to rummaging through the small pile of personal effects that had been left on a nearby chair.

The sword was the most obvious one, though it was clear that it would forever remain broken as only the dagger-long shard that was directly attached to the hilt of the sword had followed her back, and her armor was the object that she worried over the most, as she wasn't sure how the stats from the game would translate into protecting her in reality. But the thing that she found the most precious was a single slip of paper.

A photograph.

Yui, Kirito, Asuna, Liz, Silica, «The Black Cats of the Full Moon», the «Fuurinkazan», herself, and Klein, all staring back up at her, grinning widely as they cheered.

They all looked so happy, surrounded by friends and their own makeshift family. Proof, if there ever was any, that there had been good times to be found even in the midst of the war against Kayaba's creations.

It was her greatest treasure, her absolutely irreplaceable possession, the smiling faces of her precious people.

She was really glad that whatever damage had caused her injury upon reentry into her world, it'd been concussive rather than edged. Because if someone had cleaned her armor of blood and accidentally destroyed that picture as a result, she might've tried to kill them for it.

Getting to her feet wasn't really an issue any longer, there was barely any pain in her chest at all when she moved, even if she easily got winded. So Zero moved over to the open space her secluded room left her with, and began to wield the sword as if it was unbroken, silently fighting an imaginary enemy in an attempt to see how much of her movement from Sword Art Online had carried over into the world of her birth.

The stances felt off-balance without an actual sword to steady her, but it was enough to ascertain that she did indeed remain in possession of _some_ of her ability with a blade. The thought was comforting, though it did make her worry a little over her possible luck in cooking anything potentially edible in the near future.

XXX

Asuna suppressed the urge to growl as she remembered what had happened.

"Stupid-, idiotic-, _men_!" She huffed, her fists clenching and unclenching as she wished to grab them by their necks and shake them until they stopped being stupid.

Klein had somehow managed to acquire ALfheim Online, without even leaving the hospital, and had caused some serious complications for the staff when he'd simply reattached his Nerve Gear straight from his hospital bed. Firstly, because nobody was sure if he would somehow end up trapped again, and secondly, because Kirito had been his usually idiotically noble self and _gone in after him_.

Thankfully, Asuna's father owned the company, so getting herself one of the modified Nerve Gears that had been designed to keep the SAO-incident from ever reoccurring was fairly easy.

Still grumbling at their recklessness, Asuna put it on, and started ALfheim Online.

She'd be damned if she'd let her husband risk his neck without her being there to watch his back for him. Stupid idiot though he was.

XXX

Klein stared at the small girl that had hidden herself within her papa's Nerve Gear in order to keep from being erased along with the rest of Sword Art Online.

He was happy that she was there, happy for his friend who'd found his daughter, even if she was a little more peculiar in origin than they'd originally anticipated. But there was still no signs of Zero.

"So, was Zero-chan an AI too?" Klein finally asked.

Yui shook her head. "No. Aunty was... a player, definitely." She paused, looking a bit uncertain. "But she was different, somehow."

"Yui, where is she?" Kirito asked.

Yui's face contorted into a pained expression of confusion. "I-... I don't know. When the logging out happened... There was a barrier, a trap, I don't know, it was capturing players, and then aunty got angry. _Really_ angry." She shivered. "And then it was-... it was gone. And she was separating from everyone, going away somewhere." She sniffled at the memory. "And she told me to tell-... to tell Klein that she loves him."

Asuna pulled her into a hug, allowing the girl to cling to her as she cried.

Klein swallowed heavily, trying not to think of that confession as a 'goodbye', before a thought occurred to him. "Wait, didn't the ALO servers crash when the logging out happened?"

Kirito nodded. "They said that it must've caused some backlash across the net, overloading the servers and crashing the game. But it didn't happen to any other game or site, so people are guessing it's because of it relying on a similar source code."

"What if it was Zero-chan?" Klein asked the boy.

"That's-..." Kirito paused, turning to Asuna with a slightly worried frown. "If someone was trying to catch players that were being logged out and transfer them into ALO, and their capturing-programs were suddenly destroyed, it could've easily caused their servers to crash."

"My father would never allow something like that." Asuna argued.

"Are you sure that he would've known if it'd happened?" Klein countered.

They all shared speculative glances.

"I'll look into it." Asuna finally declared with the fierce determination born of two years of life-or-death situations.

Sighing, Kirito pulled her into a comforting hug, patting Yui on the head at the same time. They were family, and family was family, regardless of what they were of where they came from.

Klein felt his first real smile since before the fight against Boss of the 75th Floor sneak onto his face at the sight of them. He wondered if Liz would take a bet on how fast the married couple would get themselves engaged in the real world as well. Then again, Zero would probably be annoyed with him if he did... and he kind of already owed the girl money for accidentally falling in love with Zero within the year. Bummer.

XXX

Zero glared at the female water mage who was trying to convince her that she wasn't up to walking.

She'd been walking around her room just fine before the woman had suddenly burst in and started telling her what she could and could not do. And whilst Zero could understand following orders, it wasn't as if there was any great hurry in the orders being relayed, so the woman ought to explain herself.

Unless of course she wanted Zero to place her into the 'potentially an idiot'-folder of her personality classification. Not a lot of people were ever salvaged from that folder, and only those who occupied it but only very rarely interacted with her was reasonably safe from falling into the legendarily dreaded 'idiot folder' of Zero «The Diplomat».

The water mage wasn't making a good case for herself.

"Explain to me how remaining still, when I feel fine, will improve my health." Zero finally cut the woman off, her voice slipping into the brisk commanding tone that had once been used in order to keep the Clearing Group from bickering needlessly.

The woman blinked, having straightened imperceptibly at the sound of her voice. "It's possible that your body has healed itself well enough for you to move about. However, there's a bigger likelihood that your injury has merely superficially healed, and that any strain you put on it will only serve to lengthen the time that you spend here."

Zero gave her an assessing stare, considering the words, as well as the professionalism with which they'd been explained to her.

She nodded. "Very well then, I shall rest." And promptly returned to the bed.

The water mage stared at her for a long moment, looking confused and vaguely suspicious, no doubt already believing her patient to be plotting to continue her escapades if she left her alone.

Zero sighed at the woman, but relented. "I give you my word, that as long as your demands for bed-rest remains reasonable, that I shall not move from this bed without another's aid." She raised an eyebrow at the woman. "Does this satisfy you?"

The woman looked about ready to argue, but instead disappeared from the room, grumbling something unintelligible about crazy patients.

Zero wrote that down as a win.

XXX

Klein groaned. It'd been nearly two days since they'd gotten their first lead from Yui, and despite the arrest of some guy in charge of ALfheim Online, that Asuna really disliked for some past reason, they hadn't gotten any closer to finding the girl.

Kirito was tinkering with stuff almost obsessively whenever he got a free moment from his rehabilitation, Asuna was trying to convince her father to somehow get her and Kirito moved to the same hospital so that she could spend more time with him, and Klein had been getting in touch with Silica, Liz, Agil, and the «Fuurinkazan» to tell them of what they knew about Zero's and Yui's situations so far.

Silica had been understandably distraught to hear that her big sister hadn't been found, Agil had been awed at the thought of an AI becoming as alive as Yui truly was, Liz was ribbing him for owing her money whilst trying to keep her good cheer at the thought of Zero disappearing, and the «Fuurinkazan»... Well, Klein honestly wasn't sure what his guild-members were up to, but he was pretty sure that they were betting money on something.

Frowning down on the list that he'd composed of all the known facts in regards to Zero, Klein wondered if the girl had known that this would happen.

She hadn't originally believed herself to be stuck in a game. She'd been confused over why there was only a a single moon in the sky. She hadn't believed people were capable of traveling to the moon. She was considered a failure back home, and was likely bullied for it considering her 'nickname'. She had been raised in a strict family. She was good with politics. She was awful at cooking. She had a developed sense of fair play, but was perfectly willing to be ruthless when the situation called for it. She likely had some connection to the military life. She was sixteen years old when the game started, and eighteen when it ended. And she had naturally pink hair.

Alright, so that last one was reason enough to make a biologist cry, but it was something that she'd always been rather insistent on. And Zero never lied. At least not really, she was horrible at lying.

It was really all a jumbled mess that made no sense... except that Zero was definitely the person that had been described, and she'd always seemed to love Aincrad, perhaps even more so than Kirito.

And what if that love didn't stem from experiencing the world, as much as it stemmed from Zero meeting the people inside of it?

Klein had seen her, sometimes, watching him and the others with bittersweet eyes, as if knowing that it would all come to an end. And maybe the upcoming end that she'd been bitter over hadn't been the risks they were taking by being part of the Clearing Group, but her own separation from them once the game was over.

It made an awful amount of sense. But the only way for her to know that was if she somehow knew that they'd never find her in the real world, and how was that even possible? Was she already dead? But no, for some reason, Klein was absolutely convinced that Zero wasn't dead, not yet.

There was really only one thing that he could think of to explain it.

Zero's world had more than one moon hanging in its sky, and she knew that theirs didn't.

XXX

Zero blinked stupidly at the cloaked form who'd knocked on her private room in the middle of the night. Why in the world was anyone visiting a hospitalized person in the middle of the night? Wasn't that contradictory to their needs for rest somehow?

Apparently taking her stupefied silence as an invitation, the cloaked figure darted inside of her room.

Zero turned around, allowing the door to close in order to observe the intruder carefully.

"It's been a while, Louise Francoise." A soft voice emerged from within the figure's hood.

Frowning in thought, Zero twitched in sudden recollection. There was only really one person who ever called her that. "Princess?"

"Ah, there's no need to be so formal, Louise Francoise." The girl lowered her hood, looking exasperatedly amused, before her face was contorted by sudden worry. "I heard that you'd been injured. I wanted to come sooner, but-..." She trailed off glancing away guiltily.

Zero slowly raised an eyebrow at the girl. "I've been confined to the bed for the last two days on the healer's orders alone. There's really no need to worry, princess."

Princess Henrietta of Tristain stared at her suspiciously. "You've always been too stubborn, Louise Francoise. And I told you not to be so formal."

Zero snorted a laugh, shoulders shaking in sudden mirth. "Oh, but you've certainly learned the noble art of hypocrisy, my dear princess." She grinned cheekily at the girl she'd grown up with. "If I can't call you 'princess' then you'll have to shorten my name."

Henrietta's mouth dropped open, eyes widening in shock at the casual friendliness her old friend was displaying. Yes, certainly, the two of them had been playmates in their youth, and Henrietta honestly trusted the girl with her life, but Louise had always been painfully polite once she'd become old enough to realize what her playmate being royalty actually meant.

Thus, seeing Louise act so... openly, in her presence was as shocking as it was pleasant.

"Then... Louise?" The princess tried, looking a little bit unsure.

Nodding happily, Zero gesture towards a chair. "Take a seat, Henrietta. If you'll excuse me, I'll have to return to the bed in an effort to keep the healer from being too upset with me." And with a mocking curtsy, she unceremoniously dropped herself into the hospital bed.

Henrietta blinked, and couldn't quite catch the giggle that escaped at her friend's peculiar antics.

She was glad that she was alright, that there was no danger, and that the girl could act so cheerfully in her presence once more. She'd missed the girl, truth be told, when faced with the endless boredom and the annoying old men that came with her position.

There was a long moment of silence as neither girl knew exactly how to start a conversation with the other, as it'd been a very long time since they'd truly talked.

Finally, Zero sighed heavily, staring up at the ceiling. "Henrietta, in a few days time, we might never meet again." She glanced over at the girl who was now sporting a horrified look. "I failed my Summoning after all, and I will most likely be sold off into marriage before the end of the month."

"B-But, your parents surely wouldn't-!" She tried.

Zero shook her head. "The Valliere family is a noble family. And tradition dictates what shall be. They'll make sure that I will end up with as pleasant a husband as is possible in the circumstances, but I _will_ be married off." She paused, taking in the sympathy in the girl's eyes, before shrugging. "Which is why I'm going to fake my own death before the end of the week."

Henrietta spluttered. "What?!"

Laughing silently at her expression, Zero grinned enthusiastically at her old friend. "I'm not going to marry anyone I don't want to, and if that means that I'll never be able to hold the name of 'Valliere' ever again, then so be it."

"But-... but you'll become a commoner!" Henrietta gasped.

Zero sighed contently. "Yeah, that'll be great." She shivered in suppressed pleasure. "No more politics... no more stupid bickering idiots... ah, heaven..." She hugged herself, giggling happily at the thought.

"But how will you live?" Henrietta fretted desperately.

There was a pause as Zero took a bit of time to come down from her emotional nirvana at the thought of escaping from the idiots that had so plagued her political career. "Trial and error, I guess. I'm pretty good at surviving things." She finally admitted with a sheepish shrug.

Henrietta opened her mouth to protest that course of action, before closing it again, sighing heavily. "I suppose it is good that one of us can escape duty in order to follow our hearts." She mumbled, slumping in her chair.

Zero flinched, suddenly recalling the political move of marrying the princess off with the Emperor of Germania.

There was an awkward silence that stretched out between the two old friends for a long moment.

"Henrietta, I will never see him again." She finally admitted, staring out through the window and towards the twin moons that hung in the sky. "I will fight for him and I will search for a way to return to his arms, but I already know it to be hopeless."

"Then, why? Why abandon your family like that?" Henrietta asked slowly, sounding a little scared to hear the answer.

Zero hummed thoughtfully. "Because... he said he'd always be there. And despite his faults, he's a man of his word. So I believe in him, even when I know that it's useless, hopeless. I believe that he'll be there, that he'll find me again."

Henrietta stared at the girl-... no, young woman in front of her, and wondered when it was that her childhood friend had suddenly grown up. Louise was wearing a conflicted expression, a mixture of longing, devotion, sadness, amusement, annoyance, and a warm feeling that shone like fire in her eyes that was quite possibly 'love'.

"Louise..." She breathed the name, rising from her chair to join the girl on her bed, hugging the smaller girl to her chest.

Leaning into her friend, grateful for the comfort as she'd once again managed to poke at the wound that was Klein's not-presence, Zero returned to their original topic. "I have a pair of legs to travel on, some money hidden away, a cute face, and a vicious right hook. I'll be fine."

Henrietta wasn't sure if her shaking was a laugh or a sob. "What if they're armed?" She tried to persuade the girl.

Zero chuckled a little. "I can handle a sword, I'll just need to find one that won't break the first time it has to take a hit." She very nearly winced as she suddenly remembered Kirito's shattering sword, and Asuna's falling body.

If she had to use up all of her saved up money in order to buy a sword that was that durable, then she would do so. She never wanted to see something like that ever again.

Henrietta nodded reluctantly, because in the end it wasn't her choice to make. It was Louise's, and she'd made her decision long before Henrietta walked through that door.

The rest of the visit was spent in remembrance of all the days gone by, and of the bonds that they'd shared from an early age. Zero knew that Henrietta would most likely send her an invitation to join her musketeer guards if she ever proved herself even remotely capable of reaching such a level, and Henrietta knew that if she did, that Louise would most likely turn her down.

Because she was not the determined girl who wanted acknowledgment, not the noble girl endlessly loyal to the crown, and not the devout girl of the Church of the Founder. She was the girl who'd fallen in love, and was perfectly willing to abandon her _everything_ in order to – maybe, perhaps, possibly – find the man that she loved. And why in the world would someone like that wish to tie themselves down to the very people who might hinder their reunion with that loved one?

When Henrietta walked out that door, she understood perfectly what her old friend had told her in the beginning of their talk.

In a few days, they might never meet again.

It was a bittersweet feeling, and though she was determined to keep tabs on the girl and track her down for some proper conversation every now and again, life goes on, and she hoped that one day that the only thing she would find of her old friend was a note saying that her hopeless hope had paid off, and that she was happy in the arms of the man that she loved.

XXX

"Mother." Zero greeted the woman as she entered the hospital room.

"Daughter." The woman nodded in return, a pensive gleam in her eyes, even as her face remained as blank as ever.

Sighing tiredly, Zero cut straight to the point. "A Valliere without magic is only good as a bargaining method."

Her mother's face twitched, obviously not wanting to agree with her, even as she knew that she spoke the truth. It made Zero smile a little.

"I cannot live as a Valliere, mother."

"Louise...!" The woman protested.

Zero held up a hand, wanting to finish her explanation before she was interrupted. "I will either be married off to whoever will have me, or I will be locked inside of the estate in an attempt to protect me. That is not a life I can stomach." She met her mother's eyes. "Thus, despite how I love my family, I cannot live as a Valliere."

Her mother stared at her for a long moment, trying to judge her sincerity, before speaking again. "Then, what will you do?"

"I will fake my death, and take up a new name. I will become a commoner, and I will travel where my feet will take me." Zero stated honestly.

There was another moment of silence in between them as her mother judged her words.

"How can you live as a commoner, daughter? You've lived your entire life as a noble, there is much you don't know about the way commoners live." She finally argued, though she already seemed somewhat resigned to her daughter's decision.

Zero decided to be perfectly honest. "I've lived as a commoner and as a soldier for over two years." She smiled as her mother's eyes widened when she couldn't detect any lies. "I know how to handle a sword, and I know how to beg for scraps." Her smile became nostalgic at the memory of doing just that for Asuna's food. "I've camped without shelter in the middle of a blizzard, and I know enough about politics to be able to keep myself out of the nobles' line of sight." She had really hated the weekend that she and Liz had ended up stranded on the 55th Floor, trying to mine dragon poop.

It was one of those moments that when the rest of the guild had asked them where they'd been, they'd told them to shut up. Some things were not meant to be explained.

Her mother frowned, remaining silent, before finally sighing heavily.

"We'll have to inform your sisters, and then we'll have to review this plan of yours to fake your death." She narrowed her eyes at her daughter, daring her to defy her.

Zero just smiled. This had gone a lot better than she'd originally hoped that it would.

XXX

Klein shook his head in awe as he watched the result of a little over a week of Kirito's careful tinkering.

He'd managed to transfer Yui to a computer that allowed her to speak to them, even outside of ALO. And it was obvious from the way that Kirito's tinkering hadn't slowed down, that the clever brat wasn't planning on stopping until his daughter was able to run around like a regular girl.

Asuna was looking warm and happy through her tears, speaking to her daughter through a microphone, and watching the girl's face changing effortlessly inside of the graphical thingamajig. It looked just like a regular video-call, even though it really wasn't.

If Kirito could do this, in just a few days... if he could bring Yui into their world so easily... then what the hell was Klein doing just standing around?

He still had to find Zero-chan. After all, he'd given her his word that he'd be there with her, always.

First, he was going to need a way to monitor alternate dimensions. Or perhaps track energy signatures? She had to have gotten inside SAO somehow, and that'd probably be a good place to start.

Damn, he was totally going to have to go back to school, wasn't he?

XXX

"Where did you learn how to use a sword anyway, partner?" The clanky voice asked her curiously.

Zero hummed thoughtfully, not sure how to explain it best. "I suppose you could say that I learned it from a man, a madman who created a world over which he himself would rule supreme, before trapping ten thousand innocents within its confines."

There was a pause as the sword digested that information, during which Zero continued walking down the winding country road.

"So, he made the world, and you just picked it up trying to survive?" The sword guessed.

"Pretty much." Zero admitted unhesitatingly.

"How did you escape?" The sword asked, sounding vaguely intrigued. "Was it the same way you escaped from that noble-name of yours?"

Zero snorted. "I didn't escape at all." She shook her head. "No, I watched my little brother fight against god, and walk away victorious." She smiled faintly at the memory of realizing that the two newlyweds both still lived. "He always _was_ better than me in a fight."

Derflinger made a strange noise. "He was better than _you_?" It asked in disbelief. "That's-... that's pretty amazing."

Zero's smile turned into a grin. "Well, he was a really amazing little brother." She admitted with fond nostalgia.

It was a good decision to pick Derflinger over any of the other swords in that shop. She would've probably gotten mindlessly bored from all this walking before the end of the week otherwise. Not to mention its apparent ability of eating magic, and how it'd been a fairly amazing sword even before any of those factors had been considered.

Zero took a deep breath, relishing in the smell of summer. She would probably drop by the Valliere estates at some point, dutifully insisting on her name being simply 'Zero', just like she would drop by the capital and talk with Henrietta at some point in the future. Hell, she'd probably even visit Zerbst one of these days.

It didn't really matter if people didn't believe that she'd died, as long as everyone was _officially_ aware that Louise Francoise le Blanc de la Valliere was dead and buried. Nobody really cared about what was in effect a disinherited noble wandering Halkeginia, regardless of her skill with a sword.

It was a good life.

XXX

XXX **(The Epilogue)** XXX

XXX

It wasn't a bad assignment by any stretch of the word. There was of course a lot of travel involved, but that just really meant that you got to see the world. Not to mention that by the time you found her, you'd be able to talk to Zero herself.

In fact, many of Henrietta's knights considered the reoccurring assignment as a pilgrimage of sorts. A chance to meet with the legend of Albion. Because what kind of commoner would not be in awe of a single swordsman changing the tide of a war?

There was of course rumors that Zero had been born as a noble, and the fact that she was a personal friend of the Queen of Tristain was somewhat supportive of that idea, but the woman used no magic beyond her skills with a sword. She was a commoner, and as such she was adored by the common soldiers and the people.

There was even a rumor that she'd sparred with Karin of the Heavy Wind and won, though perhaps that was to be expected as the retired legend of a mage was surely getting on in her years by now.

Regardless, the chance to meet with Zero personally was enough to make the knights assigned to tracking her down quite content with their lot.

Of course, rumors from other knights usually spoke of the many great deeds that they happened across in her trail, so they weren't all that surprised when they encountered a town saved from bandits, or a nest of goblins that had been wiped out.

But things took a turn for the strange when they found Zero's talking sword, Derflinger, stabbed into the ground on an unassuming hill, where a single set of footprints suddenly disappeared into nothingness.

When they asked the sword for an explanation, it answered simply. "He truly was a man of his word."

Uncertain of what to make of his words, the knights decided to carry the famous sword to the Queen in the hopes that she'd be able to make more sense of it. Though, Derflinger didn't spend the journey silent, they didn't manage to get anything else out it other than its repeated attempts at gambling.

But when they arrived in the palace, and Queen Henrietta heard their tale, she called for the finest wine in the cellar, before raising her glass.

"A toast; to family, to old friends, and to the eternal hope of True Love."

XXX

**A/n: And so ends the tale of Zero ****«The Diplomat****», and her lover Klein ****«The Man of His Word****».**

**Thank you everyone who reviewed, thank you everyone who put this among your Favorites, I'm happy that this was as well received as it has been.**

**Other than that, there's been some complaints about this story being too short. I understand that perfectly. However, in comparison to what I normally write, this thing is about three times as long as a "reasonably long" fic, and I honestly don't think I would've been able to finish it if I'd tried to expand on it any more. A case of "a little is better than nothing at all", if you will.**


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